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THE BEACON BIOGRAPHIES 

EDITED BY 

M. A. DeWOLFE HOWE 



FATHER HECKER 

BY 

HENRY D. SEDGWICK, Jr. 




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FATHER HECKER 



HENRY D. SEDGWICK, Jr. 




BOSTON 

SMALL, MAYNARD Sf COMPANY 

MDCCCC 

■ 3 



Copyright, ipoo 
By Small, Maynard & Company 

[Incorporated) 



Entered at Stationers' Hall 



THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Copies Reseived 

MAR. 23 1901 

Copyright entry 

CLASS ft/XXo. Ne. 

COPY*> 






George H. Ellis, Boston 



The frontispiece to this volume is from 
a photograph loaned by Mrs. George V. 
Seeker of a painting by Father Keeker's 
niece, Mrs. J. Albert Locke. The original 
is in the possession of the Paulist Fathers 
in New York City. The present engraving 
is by John Andrew & Son, Boston. 



PEEFACB. 

The materials for this sketch have been 
drawn almost entirely from the ' i Life of 
Father Seeker," written by Father Walter 
Elliott. Father Elliott has been for many 
years a member of the Paulist community, 
and had the privilege of intimate friendship 
with Father Keeker. He had access to 
Father Seekers journal — the chief source 
of our information concerning his thoughts 
and feelings during youth — and to letters 
written by Father Seeker to his family and 
friends. There is no dispute about Father 
Seeker } s character or about his acts. The 
controversy over u Americanism' J is the 
clash between contrary opinions concerning 
the orthodoxy j and also the probable effect, 
of certain ideas which bear, at least out- 
wardly, a close resemblance to those held by 
Father Seeker. The chapter on "Ameri- 
canism" is a simple record of facts with 
which the public is familiar. 

Nobody who feels an interest in the 



viii PEEFACE 

religious and spiritual condition of this 
country can fail to take hope and courage 
from even a little knowledge of Father 
Keeker's heart and soul. 

H. D. s., JR. 
New York, October, 1900. 



CHEONOLOGY. 

1819 
December 18. Isaac Thomas Hecker was 
born in New York City. 

1830 
Began to work in his brother's bakery. 

1834 
Made the acquaintance of Orestes A. 
Brownson 

1843 
January. Went to Brook Farm and 
stayed till July. 
July 11. Went to Fruitlands. 
July 25. Left Fruitlands. 
August. Eeturned to New York. 

1844 
April. Went to Concord, Massachusetts, 
to study, and stayed till June. 
August 1. Was baptised into the Eoman 
Catholic Church by Bishop (Cardinal) 
McCloskey. 



x CHEONOLOGY 

1845 
Made the acquaintance of the Eedemp- 
torist Fathers in New York City. 
July. Sailed for Belgium to begin his 
novitiate in that order at St. Trond. 
August 31. Began his novitiate. 

1846 
October 15. Became a member of the 
Congregation of the Most Holy Be- 
deemer. 

October 16. Went to Wittem, in Holland, 
to study. 

1848 
September. Was sent to Clapham, Lon- 
don. 

1849 
October 23. Was ordained priest by 
Bishop (Cardinal) Wiseman in London. 

1851 
March 19. Got back to New York. 

1852-1857 
Life as Eedemptorist in America. 



CHBONOLOGY xi 

Wrote Questions of the Soul and Aspira- 
tions of Nature. 

1857 
Plan for founding an English-speaking 
Eedemptorist house. 

August 26. Arrived in Eome on his 
errand ]bo the General of the Order of 
the Most Holy Eedeemer. 
August 29. Expelled from that Order. 
December 22. Had his first audience with 
Pius IX. 

1858 
March 6. Decree of the Congregation of 
Bishops and Eegulars releasing Hecker 
and his brethren from their Order. 
May. Eeturned to New York. 
July 7. Paulist Programme of Eule ap- 
proved by Archbishop Hughes. 

1859 
June 19. The corner-stone of the first 
Paulist house was laid. 
November 24. The house was completed. 



xii CHEONOLOGY 

1865 
April. Founding of The Catholic World. 

1866 
Founding of The Catholic Publication 
Society. 

1869 
November 26. Arrived in Eome to attend 
the Council of the Vatican. 

1870 
June. Eeturned to New York. 
Founding of The Young Catholic. 

1871 
Lost his health. 

1872 
Went to the South for his health. 

1873-1875 
Travelled abroad. 

1875 
February. Published An Exposition of the 
Church in View of Recent Difficulties and 
Controversies and the Present Needs of the 
Age. 
October. Eeturned to New York. 



CHBONOLOGY xiii 

1887 
Published The Church and the Age. 

1888 
February 14. His brother George died. 
December 22. Isaac Thomas Hecker died 
in New York City. 



FATHER HECKER 



FATHER HECKER. 



Isaac Thomas Hecker was born in 
a house on Christie Street, in the city of 
New York, on December 18, 1819. He 
was the youngest child of John Hecker 
and Caroline Sophia Susanna Henrietta 
Freund. John Hecker, whose father 
was a brewer, was born in Wetzlar, 
Prussia, and emigrated to this country 
in 1800. His wife, who was fourteen 
years younger than he, was born in 
Elberfeld, Prussia, in 1796, the year 
before her parents emigrated. Her 
father, Engel Freund, was a clock- 
maker. John Hecker was a machinist 
and a brass-founder by occupation. 
During his early married life he enjoyed 
a fair degree of material prosperity. 
Both families had belonged to the Luth- 
eran sect, but Mrs. Hecker became a 
Methodist. She was a woman of strong 
character, devout nature, and quick 



2 FATHEE HEOKEE 

sympathies. Father Hecker derived 
from her his marked individuality, and 
he was bound to her by the deepest 
affection. After he was grown up, he 
wrote to her: il Mother, I cannot ex- 
press the depth of gratitude I feel toward 
you for the tender care and loving dis- 
cipline with which you brought me up 
to manhood. Without it, oh, what 
might I not have been ! The good that 
I have, under God, I am conscious that 
I am greatly indebted to thee for. At 
times I feel that it is thou acting in me, 
and that there is nothing that can ever 
separate us. A bond which is as eternal 
as our immortality, our life, binds us 
together, and cannot be broken. " 

When a little boy, the family means 
diminished, and he was obliged to leave 
school and go to work to earn his living. 
He began in the office of a Methodist 
newspaper, Zion's Herald. Afterward 
he worked in his father's brass foundry; 
and at eleven he pushed a baker's cart 



FATHEE HECKEE 3 

for his two elder brothers, who had a 
bakery in Eutgers Street, near Cherry. 

From the age of twelve to seventeen 
Isaac continued to work in the bakery, 
and then he began to show that eager 
interest in the life of the community 
which marked him so strongly in later 
years. This interest took him into poli- 
tics. There was at that time a radical 
democratic party called the Working- 
man's Party, which Hecker and his 
brothers joined. Isaac used to harangue 
in the streets on the subject of proper 
currency when he was no older than 
thirteen. 

About this time he came under the 
influence of one of the leaders of the 
Workingman's Party, Dr. Orestes A. 
Brownson. Brownson was a man of 
most marked individuality and of varied 
experience. He had strong human sym- 
pathies and a keen, logical intelligence. 
Born and bred in Vermont, as a young 
man he had joined the Presbyterian 



4 FATHEE HECKEE 

Church. After a few years he quitted 
that sect, and became a TTniversalist, 
going into the ministry ; but not long 
thereafter, under the intellectual influ- 
ences of Unitarianism, he shifted to the 
Unitarian ministry. He was a philan- 
thropist and a metaphysician. He took 
up certain opinions similar to those of 
Eobert Owen, Saint-Simon and Fourier, 
and forsook the ministry for the career 
of a stump speaker and man of letters. 
He was much interested in politics ; 
and at this time preached a species of 
socialism of a somewhat material char- 
acter, urging all men to labour for the 
good things of this life, on the ground, 
among others, that there was nothing 
beyond. At this time, too, he seems to 
have lost all faith in the Christian relig- 
ion as a divine revelation, and yet to 
have clung the closer to it as a social 
system. Direct, ardent, eloquent, he 
was a very effective speaker. Brown- 
son was nearly twice as old as Hecker, 



FATHEE HECKEE 5 

and acquired a strong influence over 
him, which became reciprocal as years 
went on. Brownson himself did not 
join the Eoman Catholic Church until a 
few months after Hecker. 

Hecker had been brought up by his 
mother in the Methodist faith, and had 
been taught to consider Christ as the 
Sacrifice demanded by Divine Justice. 
As Hecker felt no consciousness of sin 
in himself, he had never been strongly 
drawn to this conception. He had no 
real attachment to Christian doctrines. 
He became a half sceptic upon religious 
matters. 

Familiarity with Brownson increased 
Hecker' s natural interest in philosophy. 
He gave himself to various metaphysi- 
cal speculations, especially to the meta- 
physical aspect of religion. There is a 
story that Hecker was found one day at 
the dough-trough with Kant's Critique 
of Pure Reason fastened open on the 
wall in front of him. He also read 



6 FATHEE HECKEE 

Fichte and Hegel, and at the same time 
took a deep interest in the exposition 
of religious doctrine. He would walk 
three miles of a Sunday morning to hear 
the Eev. Orville Dewey. Little by little 
his mind began to desert the matters of 
daily life, and to habituate itself to a life 
half of thought, half of the imagination, 
wholly perhaps of the spirit. 

Not until he was twenty-three did 
Hecker realise that he must break away 
from the bake-shop, and lead a life out- 
side the path of ordinary men. As a 
young lad, he had felt impulses out of 
the common. At night sometimes he 
would run out of the shop and wander 
along the wharves of the East Eiver, 
speculating, thinking to himself, ' 6 What 
does God desire of me?" Before he 
was old enough to vote, he had lost all 
confidence in social regeneration by po- 
litical parties and political agitation. 
As he grew older, he became inwardly 
troubled. He deemed the whole scheme 



FATHEB HECKEE k 7 

of the ordinary business of money-mak- 
ing wrong. " The heathenish selfishness 
of business competition started me away 
from the world. " He felt that he must 
break away from the city. So he went to 
Chelsea, near Boston, in Massachusetts, 
to see Brownson and get advice, comfort, 
and leisure to reflect. From there at 
Christmas time in 1842, he wrote home 
to his brothers that he found it impos- 
sible for him to continue to live with 
them and be a baker, that there was some- 
thing deeper than himself, beyond his 
control, which urged him on, and that 
there was nothing for him to do but to 
follow the new life and light which were 
opening before him. The influences at 
work upon him, he describes in his diary : 
"How can I doubt these things? Say 
what may be said, still they have to me 
a reality, a practical good, bearing on 
my life. They are impressive instruc- 
tors, whose teachings are given in such 
a real manner that they influence me 



8 FATHER HECKER 

whether I would or not. ... If I should 
not follow them, I am altogether to 
blame. I can have no such adviser 
upon earth. None could impress me so 
strongly, with such peculiar effect and 
at the precise time most needed. Where 
my natural strength is not enough, I 
find there comes foreign aid to my as- 
sistance. Is the Lord instructing me 
for anything? I had, six months ago, 
three or more dreams which had a very 
great effect upon my character. They 
changed it." At this time he had fits 
of nervous depression. His family 
thought that he suffered from some phys- 
ical ill, that his body unknown to him 
was asserting itself. They thought that 
he should have more outdoor occupa- 
tion, and that he had better marry, and 
make a home for himself; but Isaac 
knew better. He felt inwardly con- 
scious that the centre of all life for him 
was religion, and that the cause of all 
his inward trouble was desire for com- 
munion with God. 



FATHEE HECKEE 9 

Under date of January 10, 1843, his 
diary reads : " Could I but reveal myself 
unto myself ! What shall I say ? Is life 
dear to me ? No. Are my friends dear 
to me ? I could suffer and die for them, 
if need were, but yet I have none of the 
old attachment for them. I would clasp 
all to my heart, love all for their hu- 
manity, but not as relatives or individ- 
uals. . . . Lord, if I am to be anything, 
I am, of all, most unfit for the task. 
What shall I do ? Whom shall I cry to 
but Him who has given me life, and 
planted this spirit in me ? Unto Thee, 
then, do I cry from the depths of my 
soul for light to suffer. If there is any- 
thing for me to do, why this darkness all 
around me? I ask not to be happy, . . . 
O Lord ! Open my eyes to see the path 
Thou wouldst have me walk in." 

u January 11. — True life is one contin- 
uous prayer, one unceasing aspiration 
after the holy. I have no conception of 
a life insensible to that which is above 



10 FATHEE HECKEE 

itself. ... I would not take it on myself 
to say I have been 'born again/ but I 
know that I have passed from death 
to life. Things below have no hold upon 
me further than as they lead to things 
above. . . . Temptations still beset me, — 
not sensual, but of a kind which seek to 
make me untrue to myself. If I am not 
on my guard, I become cold. May I al- 
ways be humble, meek, prayerful, open 
to all men ! Light, love, and life, God 
is always giving ; but we turn our backs, 
and will not receive." 

There, in Chelsea, Brownson and he 
used to discuss Victor Cousin, Pierre Le~ 
roux, and Gioberti. Their discussions 
would lead them on, each opening his 
mind and heart to the other, talking of 
the deepest problems of life and relig- 
ion, until unconsciously each guided the 
other on the path toward the Catholic 
Church. Hecker was manifestly restless 
and ill at ease ; and Brownson, no doubt 
thinking that discontent with society 



FATHEE HECKEE 11 

was part of his ailment, suggested that 
he should go to Brook Farm. Thither 
Hecker went in January, 1843. 



II. 

The community of Brook Farm, as 
everybody knows, grew out of the nobler 
social discontent that affected the more 
serious people of Eastern Massachusetts 
nearly sixty years ago. Most of its 
members were Unitarians, men and 
women living under the influence of 
Channing and Emerson. These people 
sought to establish a society resting on 
a foundation free from any social wrong, 
wherein they should be able to follow in 
conduct the practice of Christ, and at 
the same time help one another share 
the pleasures and refinements of the 
mind. In this community, at the time 
Hecker went there, were George Eipley, 
George William Curtis, and others up to 
the number of some seventy. Emerson, 
Alcott, Brownson, and Margaret Fuller 
were sometimes visitors. If a member 
could not afford to pay the cost of his 
living, some four or five dollars a week, 



FATHEE HECKEE 13 

he would work for more hours, or in 
some way make up his contribution to 
the prescribed level. Hecker used to 
bake bread. Mr. Curtis has written this 
description of him from memory : "He 
was a youth of twenty-three, of German 
aspect ; and I think his face was some- 
what seamed with small-pox. But his 
sweet and candid expression, his gentle 
and affectionate manner, were very win- 
ning. He had an air of singular refine- 
ment and self-reliance, combined with a 
half-eager inquisitiveness, and upon be- 
coming acquainted with him, I told him 
that he was Ernest the Seeker, which 
was the title of a story of mental unrest 
which William Henry Channing was 
then publishing in the Dial. . . . Among 
the many interesting figures at Brook 
Farm I recall none more sincerely ab- 
sorbed than Isaac Hecker in serious 
questions. The merely aesthetic aspects 
of its life, its gayety and social pleasures, 
he regarded good-naturedly, with the 



14 PATHBE HECKEE 

air of a spectator who tolerated rather 
than needed or enjoyed them. There 
was nothing ascetic or severe in him, 
bnt I have often thought since that his 
feeling was probably what he might have 
afterward described as a consciousness 
that he must be about his Father's busi- 
ness. . . . He was a general favourite 
at Brook Farm, always equable and 
playful, wholly simple and frank in 
manner. He talked readily and easily, 
but not controversially. His smile was 
singularly attractive and sympathetic, 
and the earnestness of which I have 
spoken gave him an unconscious per- 
sonal dignity. His temperament was 
sanguine. The whole air of the youth 
was that of goodness. I do not think 
that the impression made by him fore- 
cast his career, or, in any degree, the 
leadership which he afterward held in 
his Church. But everybody who knew 
him at that time must recall his charm- 
ing amiability. . . . For a generation we 



FATHER HECKER 15 

lived in the same city, yet we never met. 
Bnt I do not lose the bright recollection 
of Ernest the Seeker, nor forget the 
frank, ardent, generous, manly youth, 
Isaac Hecker." 

The interest in his life at Brook Farm, 
nevertheless, lies in the development and 
growth of his religious nature, and not 
in the education he received from inter- 
course with members of that community. 
On February 22, 1843, he writes to his 
father and mother : u It is as impossible 
for me to give you an explanation of 
that which has led me of late as it would 
be for a stranger. All before me is dark, 
even as that is which leads me now and 
has led me before. One sentiment I 
have which I feel I cannot impart to 
you. It is that I am controlled. For- 
merly I could act from intention ; but 
now I have no future to design, nothing 
in prospect, and my present action is 
from a present cause, not from any past. 
Hence it is that, while my action may 



16 FATHEE HECKEE 

appear to others as designed, to me it is 
unlooked for and unaccountable. I do 
not expect that others can feel this as I 
do. I am tossed about in a sea without 
a rudder. What drives me onward, and 
where I shall be driven, is to me un- 
known. My past life seems to me like 
that of another person, and my present is 
like a dream. . . . All appears to me as a 
seeming, not a reality. Nothing touches 
that life in me which is seeking that 
which I know not." 

To his dear brother George he writes 
on March 6 : " What was the reason of 
my going or what made me go? The 
reason I am not able to tell. But what 
I felt was a dark irresistible influence 
upon me that led me away from home. 
What it was I know not. What keeps 
me here I cannot tell. It is only when 
I struggle against it that a spell comes 
over me." On May 12 : "Here I am, 
living in the present, without a why or a 
wherefore, trusting that something will 



FATHEE HECKEE 17 

shape my course intelligibly. I am com- 
pletely without object ; and, when occa- 
sionally I emerge — if I may so speak — 
into actual life, I feel that I have dissi- 
pated time. A sense of guilt accom- 
panies that of pleasure ; and I return 
inwardly into a deeper, intenser life, 
breaking those tender roots which held 
me fast for a short period to the out- 
ward. In study only do I enter with 
wholeness. Nothing else appears to 
take hold of my life. . . . Perhaps I 
may return and enter into business with 
more perseverance and industry than 
before ; perhaps I may stay here ; it 
may be that I shall be led elsewhere. 
But there is no utility in speculating on 
the future. If we lived as we should, 
we would feel that we lived in the 
presence of God, without past or future, 
having a full consciousness of existence, 
living the 'eternal life.' . . . George, 
do not get too engrossed with outward 
business. Eather neglect a part of it for 



18 FATHEE HECKER 

that which is immortal in its life, in- 
comparable in its fulness. It is a deep 
important truth, 'Seek first the king- 
dom of God, and then all things will be 
added.' In having nothing, we have 
all." 

On May 16 : ... u At present I wish 
to live a true life, desiring nothing ex- 
ternal, seeing that things external can- 
not procure those things for and in which 
I live. I do not renounce things, but 
feel no inclination for them. All is in- 
different to me, — poverty or riches, life 
or death. I am loosed. " 

At this time he began somewhat to 
look toward the Catholic Church. He 
attended service on Easter Sunday, and 
the next day, April 17, wrote in his 
diary : — 

" There may be objections to having 
paintings and sculptures in churches ; 
but I confess I never enter a place where 
there is either but I feel an awe, an 
invisible influence which strikes me 



FATHEE HECKEE 19 

mute. I would sit in silence, covering 
my head. A sanctified atmosphere seems 
to fill the place and to penetrate my 
soul when I enter. ... A loud word, a 
heavy footstep, makes me shudder, as if 
an infidel were desecrating the place. 
I stand speechless in a magical atmos- 
phere that wraps my whole being, 
scarcely daring to lift my eyes. A 
perfect stillness comes over my soul. It 
seems to be soaring on the bosom of 
clouds. 

"April 20. — My soul is disquieted, my 
heart aches. . . . Tears flow from my eyes 
involuntarily. My soul is grieved — for 
what ? Yesterday, as I was praying, the 
thought flashed across my mind, Where 
is God ? Is He not here ? Why prayest 
thou as if He were at a great distance 
from thee ? Think of it. Where canst 
thou place Him? ... Is He not here? 
Is His presence not nearest of all to 
thee ! Oh, think of it ! God is here. 

"April 24. — The Catholic Church 



20 FATHEB HEOKEE 

alone seems to satisfy my wants, my 
faith, life, soul. ... I may be labouring 
under a delusion, yet my soul is Catholic ; 
and that faith responds to my soul in its 
religious aspirations and its longings. I 
have not wished to make myself Catho- 
lic, but that answers on all sides to the 
wants of my soul. It is so rich, so full. 
One is in harmony all over, — in unison 
with Heaven, with the present, living in 
the natural body, and the past, who 
have changed. There is a solidarity 
between them through the Church. I 
do not feel controversial. My soul is 
filled. 

u May 16. — Life appears to be a per- 
petual struggle between the heavenly 
and the worldly. ... I have faith that 
there are spiritual laws beneath all this 
outward framework of sight and sense, 
which will, if rightly believed in and 
trusted, lead to the goal of eternal life, 
harmony of being and union with God. 
So I accept my being led here. Am 



FATHEE HEOKEE 21 

I superstitious or egoistic in believ- 
ing this? . . . Oh, were our wishes in 
harmony with Heaven, how changed 
would be the scenes of our life ! . . . 
This accordance would be music which 
only the angels now hear, — too delicate 
for beings such as we are at present. 
[May 31 (?).]— " About ten months 
ago — perhaps only seven or eight — I 
saw (I cannot say I dreamed, — it was 
quite different from dreaming, — I was 
seated on the side of my bed) a beautiful, 
angelic being, and myself standing along- 
side of her, feeling a most heavenly pure 
joy. It was as if our bodies were lumi- 
nous and gave forth a moonlike light, 
which sprung from the joy we experi- 
enced. I felt as if we had always lived 
together, and that our motions, actions, 
feelings, and thoughts came from one 
centre. When I looked towards her, I 
saw no bold outline of form, but an 
angelic something I cannot describe, 
though in angelic shape and image. It 



22 FATHEE HECKER 

was this picture that has left such an in- 
delible impression on my mind. For 
some time afterward I continued to feel 
the same influence, and do now so often 
that the actual around me has lost its 
hold. In my state previous to this vision, 
I should have been married ere this ; for 
there are those I have since seen who 
could have met the demands of my mind. 
But now this vision continually hovers 
over me, and prevents me by its beauty 
from accepting any one else ; for I am 
charmed by its influence, and conscious 
that, should I accept any other, I should 
lose the life which would be the only 
one wherein I could say, I live. 

"June 26. — Solomon said, after he 
had tasted all the joys of the world, 
1 Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.' I, 
who have scarcely tasted any of the 
pleasures of the world, would say with 
Solomon, i All is vanity ! ' I see noth- 
ing in which I can work. All are van- 
ities, shadows : beneath all there is noth- 



FATHEE HECKER 23 

ing. Great God ! What is all this for ? 
Why torment and pain me so? Why 
is all this action a profanity to me? 
And even holiness, what is it ? . . . Oh, 
why is it that the noblest actions of 
humanity speak not to my soul? ... I 
would joyfully be silent, obscure, dead 
to all the world, if this alone which is 
in me had life. I ask not for name, 
riches, external conditions of delight or 
splendour. Kb, the meanest of all would 
be heaven to me, if this inward impulse 
had action, lived itself out. But no, 
I am imprisoned in spirit. What im- 
prisons ? ?? 



III. 

Hecker did not find at Brook Farm 
that which he was seeking. On July 
11, 1843, he left, and went to Fruitlands, 
a farm near the village of Harvard, 
in Worcester County, Massachusetts. 
There Mr. Amos Bronson Alcott, with 
his wife and children, Mr. Charles Lane, 
and a few others had established, or 
rather had attempted to establish, a 
"Family," which should bear to Brook 
Farm somewhat the relation which 
Brook Farm bore to an ordinary com- 
munity. His diary and his letters are, 
as usual, our guide to his doings and his 
feelings. 

u Fruitlands, July 12. — Last evening 
I arrived here. After tea I went out in 
the fields, and raked hay for an hour in 
company with the persons here. We 
returned, and had a conversation on 
Clothing. Some very fine things were 
said by Mr. Alcott and Mr. Lane. . . • 



FATHEB HEGKEK 25 

"July 17. — I cannot understand what 
it is that leads me or what I am after." 
. . . He began to doubt whether Alcott 
and Lane could give him what he 
sought. "Do I not feel that I have 
something to receive here, to add to, to 
increase my highest life, which I have 
never felt anywhere else? Is this suf- 
ficient to keep me here? If I can 
prophesy, I must say no. I feel that it 
will not fill my capacity. O God, 
strengthen my resolution. Let me not 
waver. . . . But I am sinful. Oh, for- 
give my sins ! What shall I do, O 
Lord, that they may be blotted out? 
Lord, could I only blot them from my 
memory, nothing would be too great or 
too much." Feeling that he could not 
stay at Fruitlands, his thoughts turned 
to the home he loved, wondering if it 
might be that the spirit was directing 
him thither. 

"July 18. — I have thought of my 
family this afternoon, and the happiness 



26 FATHEE HECKEE 

and love with which I might return to 
them. To leave them, to give up the 
thought of living with them again, — 
can I entertain that idea ? Still, I can- 
not conceive how I can engage in busi- 
ness, share the practices, and indulge 
myself with the food and garmenture of 
our home and city. To return home, 
were it possible for me, would most 
probably not only stop my progress, but 
put me back. It is useless for me to 
speculate upon my future. Put depend- 
ence on the spirit which leads me, be 
faithful to it : work, and leave results to 
God. If the question should be asked 
me whether I would give up my 
kindred and business and follow out 
this spirit-life or return and enjoy them 
both, I could not hesitate a moment ; for 
they would not compare, — there would 
be no room for choice. What I do, I 
must do, for it is not I that do it, it is 
the spirit. What that spirit may be is 
a question I cannot answer. What it 



FATHEE HECKEE 27 

leads me to do will be the only evidence 
of its character. I feel as impersonal as 
a stranger to it. I ask, Who are you ? 
Where are you going to take me ? Why 
me ? Why not some one else ? I stand 
amazed, astonished to see myself. Alas ! 
I cry, who am I, and what does this 
mean ! and I am lost in wonder. . . . My 
relations with my family are very criti- 
cal at this period, — more so than they 
have ever been. It is the crisis of the 
state we have been in for this past year. 
If God gives me strength to be true to 
the spirit, it is very doubtful how far 
those at home will be willing to second 
it. I have written them a letter, asking 
for their own aims and views of life ; and 
I am anxious for their answer. The 
question of returning is not a wilful one 
with me, for it is the spirit which guides 
me. If it can live there, I go back. If 
not, I am governed, and must follow 
where it leads, wherever that may be." 
In that letter he says : " There are all 



28 FATHEE HECKEE 

the natural ties why we should not be 
separated, and no reasons why we 
should, unless there exists such a wide 
difference in the aims we seek to realise 
that it would be injurious or impossible 
for us to live in family, in unity, in 
love. I do not believe this difference 
exists, but, if it does, and we are con- 
scious of being led by a higher spirit 
than our own, we should and would sac- 
rifice all that hinders us from the divine 
calling. That demands implicit, uncom- 
promising obedience. It speaks in the 
tone of high authority. . . . That which 
offends it must be got rid of at all costs, 
be it wife, parents, children, brothers, 
sisters, or our own eye or hand. I do 
not contemplate a sacrifice of either of 
these. Still, it is well to consider 
whether, if such a demand should be 
made of us, we are in such a state of 
mind that we would be willing to give 
one or all up if they should stand in the 
way of our progress toward God. . . . 



FATHEE HECKEE 29 

"July 23. — I will go home, be true to 
the spirit with, the help of God, and 
wait for further light and strength. . . . 
I feel that I cannot live at this place as 
I would. This is not the place for my 
soul. My life is not theirs. They have 
been the means of giving me much light 
on myself, but I feel I would live and 
progress more in a different atmos- 
phere." 

On July 25 Hecker departed from 
Fruitlands. He made a short visit at 
Brook Farm on his way back to New 
York. His journal there reads : — 

u Brook Fai*m 7 July 31. — My expe- 
rience is different now from what it has 
been. It is much fuller : every fibre of 
my being seems teeming with sensitive 
life. I am in another atmosphere of 
sentiment and thought. . . . There is not 
that sense of heaviness, dulness, fleshli- 
ness in me. I experience no natural de- 
sires, no impure thoughts, nor wander- 
ings of fancy. Still, I feel more in- 



30 FATHEE HECKEE 

tensely, and am filled to overflowing 
with love and with desire for union. . . . 

i 'August 2. — All our thoughts and emo- 
tions are caused by some agent acting on 
us. This is true of all the senses and 
the spiritual faculties. Hence we should 
by all possible means purify and refine 
our organism, so that we may hear the 
most delicate, the sweetest, the stillest 
sounds and murmurings of the angels 
who are about us. How much fuller 
and richer would be our life if we were 
more acutely sensitive and finely text- 
ured ! How many exquisite delights nat- 
ure yields which we are not yet aware 
of ! What a world surrounds us of 
which none but holy men, prophets, and 
poets have had a glimpse ! ' ' 

In August Hecker was back in New 
York. He took up his share of the work 
with his brothers in their bakery. He 
continued to live after an ascetic stand- 
ard. He practised the simplest diet — 
grains, fruits, and nuts — and drank 



FATHEE HECKEE 31 

nothing but water. His discomfort, it 
might be called distress, with the social 
order was as strong as ever. He brooded 
over the inequalities among men. "My 
diet is all purchased and all produced by 
hired labour. I suppose that slave 
labour produces almost all my dress. 
And I cannot say that I am rightly con- 
ditioned until all I eat, drink, and wear 
is produced by love. " He tried in vari- 
ous ways to better the condition of the 
workmen employed in their business. 
By agreement with his brothers, who 
were most sympathetic and generous, he 
was able to devote some of his time to 
study and to meditation. He applied 
himself to Latin and German ; yet all the 
time his restless soul was seeking for its 
peace, and his thoughts turned more and 
more toward leaving secular society and 
joining a church. 

u September 8. — At times we are called 
to rely on Providence, to be imprudent 
and reckless according to the wisdom of 



32 FATHEE HECKEE 

the world. So I am willing to be thought. 
Each of us has an individual character 
to act out, under the inspiration of God ; 
and this is the highest and noblest we 
can do. We are forms differing from 
one another ; and, if we are acting under 
the inspirations of the Highest, we are 
doing our uttermost, — more the angels 
do not. What tends to hinder us from 
realising the ideal which our vision sees 
must be denied, be it self, wealth, 
opinion, or death." 

"September 24. — Instead of being on 
the way of goodness, I am just finding 
out the wickedness of my nature, its 
crookedness, its impurity, its darkness. 
I want deep humility and forgetfulness 
of self. I am just emerging out of gross 
darkness and my sight is but dim, so 
that my iniquities are not wholly plain 
to my vision. At present I feel as if a 
week of quiet silence would be the means 
of opening more deeply the still-flowing 
fountains of divine life. I would cut off 



FATHEE HECKEE 33 

all relations but that of my soul with 
the Spirit. All others seem intrusions, 
worldly, frivolous. The inpouring of 
the Spirit is checked by so much atten- 
tion to other than divine things. In the 
bustle and noisy confusion its voice is 
unheard. . . . 

u October 18. — I feel this afternoon a 
deep want in my soul unsatisfied by my 
circumstances here, the same as I expe- 
rienced last winter when I was led from 
this place. It is at the very depth of 
my being. Ah, it is deeply stirred! 
Oh, could I utter the aching void I feel 
within ! Could I know what would fill 
it ! Alas ! nothing that can be said — 
no, nothing — can touch the aching spot. 

u November 3. — Often I think of my 
past life and my present with such a 
strength of emotion that I would cry 
aloud : ' O Heaven, help me from my 
course ! This is not the life I would 
lead ; but how shall I change it ? O 
Lord ! wilt Thou guide me and lead me, 



34 FATHEE HECKEE 

no matter what pain and distress I may 
have to pass through, to the true path 
Thou wouldst have me go in ? Oh ! I 
thank Thee for all Thou hast in any way 
inflicted on me ; it has been to me the 
greatest blessing I could have received. 
And, O Lord ! chasten me more, for I 
need it. How shall I live, so that I may 
be the best I can be under any condi- 
tions I If those in which I now am are 
not the best, where shall I go or how 
shall I change them? Teach me, O 
Lord ! and hear my humble prayer.' 
u November 5. — How is it and why is 
it that I feel around me the constant 
presence of invisible beings who affect 
my sensibility, and with whom I con- 
verse, as it were, in thought and feeling, 
but not in expression? At times they 
so move me that I would escape them, if 
I could, by running away from where I 
am. I can scarcely keep still. I feel 
like beating, raving, and grasping what 
I know not. Ah ! it is an unearthly feel- 



FATHEE HECKEE 35 

ing, and painfully afflicts my heart. 
How to get rid of it I do not know. If 
I remain quietly where I am, by collect- 
ing its scattered rays it burns more 
deeply into my soul, bringing forth deep 
sighs, groans, and at times demanding all 
my energy to repress an unnatural howl. 
How shall I escape this ? By remaining 
here and trying to bear it or by travel- 
ling? To do the latter has often oc- 
curred to me of late. By such a cause 
I was driven from home last winter. 
What the result will be this time I can- 
not tell ; but, if I did know, I would not 
wait, as I did then, until it came on me 
with such power as to be torturing in 
the extreme. Ah, what nervous strength 
and energy I feel at such times ! 

u Thanksgiving Bay. — And now, O 
God ! if Thou helpest not, I shall be 
worse than before. Heavenly Father, as 
the flower depends on the light and the 
warmth of the sun for its grace and 
beauty, so, and much more, do I de- 



36 FATHEE HEOKBE 

pend on Thee for life and progress. O 
Lord ! from the depths of my heart I 
would implore Thee to aid me in all 
good intentions. My heart overflows 
with its fulness of gratitude for what 
Thou hast done for me, and I know Thou 
wilt not shorten Thy hand. Thy beauty, 
Thy loveliness, O God ! is beyond our 
finite vision, far above our expression. 
Lord, all I can utter is, Help my weak- 
ness. 

u December 6. — O Lord! my heart is 
choked from the utterance of its depth 
of thankfulness. O dear Christ! O 
sweet Christ ! O loving Christ ! Oh, 
more than brother, friend ! Oh, more 
than any other being can be ! O Son of 
God ! O Thou who showest forth the 
pure love of God ! O Thou inexpres- 
sible Love ! Draw me nearer Thee, let 
me feel more of Thy purity, Thy love ! 
Oh, baptise me with Thy Spirit, and 
loosen my tongue that I may speak of 
Thy love to men ! ?? 



IV. 

Heckee joined the Soman Catholic 
Church in August, 1844. In the pre- 
ceding March he had made up his mind 
to forsake secular life. This purpose 
brought peace. u I feel the presence of 
God, wherever I am. I would kneel 
and praise God in all places. In His 
presence I walk and feel His breath en- 
compass me. My soul is borne up by 
His presence and my heart is filled by 
His influence. How thankful ought we 
to be ! How humble and submissive ! 
Let us lay our heads on the pillow of 
peace, and die peacefully in the embrace 
of God." 

Having determined that he could not 
find spiritual satisfaction outside of a 
church, Hecker set about examining and 
questioning members of various Protes- 
tant sects, — Episcopal, Congregational, 
Baptist, and Methodist. He felt no 
inclination toward any of these except 



38 FATHEE HECKEE 

the Episcopal. Brownson had had a 
varied experience with Protestant sects ; 
he wrote Hecker that for his part 
he could not accept Anglicanism. At 
this time Hecker met the Eoman Catho- 
lic bishop, John Hughes, a prelate of 
strong and somewhat rigid views. His 
exposition of the Catholic faith and 
discipline, however, seems to have turned 
Hecker to an earnest consideration of 
the Anglican Church. Among other 
Episcopal clergymen he went to see a 
Mr. William Herbert Norris, the min- 
ister at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, to whom 
he had been attracted by a letter entitled 
"A Sincere Enquirer, " published by 
the latter. But he came back in disap- 
pointment. In the end of April he went 
to Concord, to study, and after some in- 
quiry found a comfortable lodging at 
the house of Mrs. Thoreau, mother of 
Henry Thoreau. 

"April 25, 1.30 p.m. — I have just 
finished my dinner : it was ein herrliches 



FATHER HECKER 39 

Essen, — unleavened bread (from home), 
maple sugar, and apples which I pur- 
chased this morning. Previous to tak- 
ing dinner I said my first lesson to Mr. 
Bradford in Greek and Latin. 

1 1 1 am extremely well situated, and feel 
contented in myself, and deeply grateful 
to you all for your goodness in helping 
me to pursue the real purpose of my 
being. All we can do is to be faithful 
to God and to the work He has given us 
to do, and, whatever end He may lead 
us to, to have that central faith that i all 
is for the best.' There is only one life, 
and that is life in God ; and only one 
death, and that is separation from 
Him. . . . 

"To you all I send my warmest and 
purest love." 

He passed his days like an anchorite. 
Most of the time he saw no one except 
his teacher, and his landlady who came 
into his room for a few minutes every 
day to make his bed. He read, studied, 



40 FATHEB HECKER 

and gave himself over to meditation. 
His wants were of the most trifling char- 
acter. He wrote to his family for some 
hard bread, some unleavened biscuit, a 
five- cent loaf, a linen coat. He lived 
on unleavened bread and figs. His drink 
was water. More and more his doubts 
and difficulties passed from him. On 
May 23 his diary reads : "How fruitful 
has this year been to me ! How strangely 
mysterious and beautiful ! And now 
my soul foreshadows more the next year 
than ever it presaged before. My life is 
beyond my grasp, and bears me on will- 
lessly to its destined haven. Like a rich 
fountain it overflows on every side. 
From within flows unceasingly the noise- 
less tide. ... It is to me now as if I had 
just been born, and I live in the Sab- 
bath of creation. Everything that I see 
I feel called on to give a name : it has a 
new meaning t^o me." 

On June 7 he received a letter from 
Brownson saying that he had begun 



FATHEE HECKER 41 

his preparations to join the Catholic 
Church, and begging Hecker also to join. 
The next day Hecker went to Boston to 
see the Catholic bishop there, and put 
himself under his instruction. Acting 
under the bishop's counsel, he resolved 
to go to Holy Cross College at "Worcester, 
to acquaint himself with practical relig- 
ious life and a system of intellectual in- 
struction, and then to go to New York 
and enter the church. He wrote his 
purposes to his family. His mother 
preferred that he should join the Epis- 
copal Church, but both she and his 
brothers fully recognised his perfect 
sincerity of purpose. 

To pass from the influences of Concord 
to the Catholic Church seems a strange 
step, but, in fact, his sojourn in Massa- 
chusetts during his wandering years had 
helped him on his path. Introspec- 
tive and docile to the interior prompt- 
ings which came or seemed to come to 
him from above, Hecker had no scien- 



42 FATHER HECKEE 

tific interest in life. He had no care for 
the order of nature nor for those physical 
facts which do not, except in a remote 
and not easily distinguished way, min- 
ister to the soul of man. Emerson, Al- 
cott, the transcendentalists, served his in- 
clinations. They attached fundamental 
importance to the vague voices which 
emerge from the depths of a man and 
speak to him with authority. They gave 
him a certain philosophy which rested 
on those inner feelings, and not upon ex- 
ternal facts. They taught him that man 
had some kind of spiritual faculty by 
which he could learn spiritual truths, in 
like manner as by intellectual faculties 
he learned physical truths. Thus his ed- 
ucation strengthened his natural bent, 
and bade him submit to the control of a 
mysterious, inward authority. "When 
once he had learned that the source of 
his education was within him, he began 
to lose his interest in books. He felt it 
drudgery or worse to study Latin and 



FATHEE HECKEE 43 

Greek, when lie might be sitting at the 
feet of the Spirit within. Before he 
finally accepted this internal authority 
as his master, he sought for proof that it 
was not a mere wayward power, not 
merely self in disguise, but proceeded 
from the Divine Spirit. He found ex- 
ternal manifestations of its mastery in 
the world, in the spiritual authority of 
the Christian religion as embodied in the 
Eoman Catholic Church. The proof of 
its identity with that spiritual authority 
was his inward peace. He writes 
June 13 : "I feel very cheerful and at 
ease since I have consented to join the 
Catholic Church. Never have I felt the 
quietness, the immovableness, and the 
permanent rest that I do now. It is 
inexpressible. I feel that essential and 
interior permanence which nothing ex- 
terior can disturb. " . . . 

From Worcester he wrote to his fam- 
ily : "Eespecting the purpose which 
leads me to New York, I have scarcely 

. 



44 FATHER HECKEE 

a word to say. Quietly, without excite- 
ment, I come with an immovable deter- 
mination to be joined to the Eoman 
Catholic Church. There is a conviction 
which lies deeper than all thought or 
speech, which moves me with an irre- 
sistible influence to take this step, which 
arguments cannot reach nor any visible 
power make to falter. Words are pow- 
erless against it and inexpressive of it. 
To attempt to explain or give to the in- 
tellectual mind the reasons why and 
wherefore would be as impossible as to 
paint the heavens or to utter the eternal 
Word, the centre of all existence. " 

On June 25 Hecker was back in New 
York, and presented a letter of introduc- 
tion, which he brought from Bishop 
Fitzpatrick, of Boston, to Bishop Mc- 
Closkey, afterward archbishop and car- 
dinal of New York. It was soon arranged 
that Hecker should be baptised on Au- 
gust 1. The bishop questioned him as to 
whether he wished to become a priest. 



FATHEE HECKEE 45 

Hecker could not answer. He felt the 
need of a period of meditation. The 
bishop intimated that a brotherhood was 
suited to his state of mind, but for that 
he would have to go to Europe as in this 
country all the ministry of the Church 
was devoted to active work. On Au- 
gust 1 he was baptised by the bishop, 
and on the following day he went to con- 
fession, and received the sacrament. 

1 i August 2. — Penance ! Joy ! Un- 
bounded love ! Sweet Jesus, Thy love 
is infinite ! Blessed faith ! Sweet love ! 
I possess an internal glory, a glowing 
flame of love ! Let my whole life be 
one act of penance ! O dear Jesus, the 
Life-giver ! . . . O ancient faith, how 
dear, how good is God in giving us sin- 
ners Thee ! . . . O blessed, ever blessed, 
unfathomable, divine faith ! O faith 
of apostles, martyrs, confessors, and 
saints !" . . . 

For a time after this period of exalta- 
tion he felt somewhat depressed, but not 



46 FATHEE HECKER 

for long. On August 20 the entry in 
his journal says: "I feel my primitive 
instincts and unvitiated tastes daily 
becoming more sensible to inspirations 
from above, from the invisible. The 
ideal world, the soul world, the kingdom 
of heaven within, I feel as if I were more 
a friend and citizen of. O Lord ! my 
heart would break forth in praise of the 
riches of the life given within ! It seems 
that in this that we enjoy all, know all, 
and possess all. If we have Thee, 
O Lord ! if Thou hast taken up Thy 
dwelling in us, we enjoy heaven within 
and paradise without ! " 

He felt more and more that business 
and living in the midst of the worka- 
day world were not for him, that they 
robbed him of the quiet and contem- 
plation in which he best could live 
his spiritual life. He wrote to Henry 
Thoreau to suggest that they make to- 
gether a pilgrimage to Eome, crossing 
Europe on foot and begging their way. 



FATHEE HECKEE 47 

Bishop McCloskey gave his approval, but 
Thoreau's moods and wishes had taken 
different direction. Hecker joined a 
class for the study of Latin and Greek ; 
but, as before, he seems to have taken 
no pleasure in study. He continued to 
practice ascetism, only more severely 
than before. He allowed himself as 
little time for sleep as possible. He 
ate nothing but nuts, apples, and bread. 
He threw himself into the spiritual life, 
as it is set forth by the traditions of the 
Catholic Church, with even more than 
his accustomed fervour. 

"December 18. — Dreams of the fut- 
ure ! Exalted visions ! Beautiful, un- 
speakable hopes ! Deep, inarticulate 
longings that fill the conscious soul ! 
Ah ! so sweet, so harmonious, so delight- 
ful, like an angel, like the bride of the 
pure and bright soul adorned for the 
nuptials, do I see the future beckoning 
me with a clear, transparent smile on- 
ward to her presence ! " 



48 FATHEB HECKEK 

Nevertheless; his times of rapture were 
interrupted by fits of penitential re- 
morse. "I am in want of greater love 
for those around me ; I perform my 
spiritual duties too negligently ; too lit- 
tle of my time is devoted to spiritual 
exercises. I feel all over sick with sin. 
Here is my difficulty, O Lord, and do 
Thou direct me. I am always in doubt, 
when I do not think of Thee alone, that 
I am sinning and that my time is mis- 
spent." 

He increased his asceticism until in 
Lent, 1845, he restricted himself to one 
meal of "nuts, bread, and apples " a 
day. 



Bishop McGloskey wished Hecker 
to become a priest ; but Hecker did not 
hear a divine call to that end. He went 
to the seminary at Fordhani, and talked 
with the professors. He consulted 
Bishop Hughes, who advised him to go 
to St. Sulpice in Paris and to the Propa- 
ganda in Borne. But Hecker felt an 
inward and controlling need for retire- 
ment from the world ; and Bishop 
McCloskey, recognising this need and 
desiring to help Hecker learn how to 
satisfy it, bade him read the lives of 
Saint Ignatius and of Saint Francis 
Xavier. 

Hecker at this time made the acquaint- 
ance of a German priest, one of the 
Bedemptorist Fathers who had recently 
become established in the city. The 
rector of the house was Father Bumpier, 
also a German. To that house Hecker 
went frequently, and there he met two 



50 FATHEE HECKEE 

young Americans who had applied to 
join the Order. One of these was Clar- 
ence A. Walworth, son of the distin- 
guished chancellor of New York, who 
had been admitted to the bar, and had 
practised his profession for a short time. 
The other was James A. McMaster, from 
Pennsylvania, of Scotch-Irish parentage, 
a young man of very ardent nature. 
At the end of July, Hecker was told by 
Father Eumpler that these two, who 
had applied to enter the Eedemptorist 
novitiate, had been accepted, and that 
they would sail for Belgium the next 
day. No novitiate had yet been estab- 
lished in America. Hecker asked leave 
to go with them. He was told that he 
must present himself to the Provincial 
of the Order, Father de Held, at Balti- 
more. Hecker went thither at once, 
travelling all night. Father de Held 
examined and accepted him, and Hecker 
took the first train back to New York. 
His brother George had already packed 



FATHEE HEOKEE 51 

his trunk. His passage was paid by his 
brothers, and that evening he sailed 
with his two companions on board the 
Argo for London. During the voyage 
Walworth taught him to say the rosary 
and other matters of religious practice, 
for Hecker had had very little regular 
religious training. They stopped in 
London a few days, and then took the 
packet from Folkestone to Antwerp. 
From there they went on immediately 
to St. Trond, a little city about thirty- 
five miles south-east of Antwerp. 

The Order of the Most Holy Eedeemer 
had been founded by Saint Alphonsus 
de Liguori about the middle of the eigh- 
teenth century. It contained a number 
of preachers who travelled about Europe 
conducting spiritual exercises for a week 
or a month, preaching penance and the 
Eedeemer' s love for sinners. St. Trond 
was the novitiate of the Belgian prov- 
ince, which included Belgium, Holland, 
and the convents in America and Eng- 
land. 



52 FATHEE HECKEE 

The convent at St. Trond, situated 
on a narrow street, was a solid building 
some tliree hundred years old, with 
little cells opening on long corridors. It 
had a little garden, and was next to a 
church, where the fathers served. There 
were twenty novices, ten or twelve 
fathers, and a number of lay brothers. 
Most of these were Belgians, Dutch, and 
Germans. French was the language 
spoken. The three new-comers donned 
the Eedemptorist habit in September, 
three weeks after their arrival. Hecker 
wrote home : "For three days my heart 
was filled with joy and gladness. I was 
like one who had been transported to a 
lovelier, a purer, and a better world. " 
The daily routine was strict. The day 
began at half-past four in the morning 
and ended at half-past nine at night. 
The time was spent in devotional exer- 
cises, meditation, recitation, study, and 
reading. An hour was allowed for exer- 
cise out of doors. Silence was imposed, 



FATEIEE HECKEE $$ 

except for one hc>ur after dinner and one 
hour after supper. On Thursdays and 
on some feast days this rigour was 
relaxed. Fridays were days of absolute 
silence. The novice' -master ; as he was 
called, was Father Otlimann. He found 
the three Americans different from the 
other novices. They continually put 
questions to him, asking for reasons. 
Hecker' s mystic philosophy seems to 
have made him think th it Hecker was 
suffering from delusions, for he deemed 
it his duty to put Hecktr to severe 
tests of obedience and humiliation ; 
and he treated Hecker at weekly con- 
fession with great rigour, causing him 
much mental pain. Of this treatment, 
Hecker many years afterward said : 
" While I was kneeling among the 
novices, outside Pere Othmann'si room, 
waiting to go to confession, I often 
begged of God that it might be His will 
that I should die before my turn came ; 
so dreadful an ordeal had confession 



I 

5 r 4 FATHEE HECKEE 

become on account of the severity of the 
novice-master." At other times, too, 
Father Othmann tried his humility. 
Once a week the novices were allowed 
a good long walk — a privilege which 
Hecker enjoyed very much. Sometimes 
when they were starting out, Hecker 
in high spirits, Othmann would say : 
"Frere Hecker, please remain at home ; 
and, instead of che walk, wash and clean 
the stairway." Nevertheless, Hecker 
was comfortea by an inward conviction 
that he was growing in grace. He in- 
creased the severity of the discipline by 
cutting his sleep down to five hours and 
sometimes to three. This he did in 
obedience to one of those inward im- 
pulses to which he felt strict obedience 
was due. At length Father Othmann 
understood the novice, recognised his 
special spiritual capacities, and fully 
acknowledged them. The two subse- 
quently became true friends. 
McMaster was deemed unfit for a re- 



FATHEE HEOKEE 55 

ligious life, and went home. The other 
two Americans took their vows, and be- 
came members of the Congregation of 
the Most Holy Eedeemer on October 15, 
1846. To this Hecker had been looking 
forward with the eagerness of a lover. 

He felt, as he said, "a special attrac- 
tion and devotion toward Our Blessed 
Lord in the Holy Sacrament, and an 
almost irresistible desire of receiving 
the blessed Communion of Divine love. 
This desire, so far from having abated, 
has greatly increased, so that I have a 
constant hunger and thirst for Our Lord 
in the sacrament of His body and blood. 
If it were possible, I would desire to 
receive no other food than this ; for it is 
the only nourishment that I have a real 
appetite for. I cannot consider it other 
than the source and substance of my 
whole spiritual and interior life. The 
day on which I have been deprived of 
it I have experienced a debility and 
want of both material and spiritual life, 



56 FATHEE HECKEE 

like one who is nearly famished. ... At 
times, when I wonld make my visit, I am 
seized with such a violent love toward 
the Blessed Sacrament that I am forced 
to break off immediately, being unable 
to support the attraction of the Spouse, 
the Beloved, the Only One of my soul." 
On August 26 he wrote to his brother 
George, who had joined the Catholic 
Church at the same time with Isaac : " I 
have now nearly eight weeks until the 
time of taking the vows. Oh that it 
were but eight minutes, — nay, eight 
seconds, — when I shall be permitted, 
with the favour and grace of God, to 
consecrate my whole being and life to His 
sole service ! Millions of worlds put on 
top of one another could not purchase 
me from my vocation. ? ? And j ust before 
the ceremony he wrote to his mother : 
"Dear mother, in half an hour I go to 
the chapel to consecrate my whole being 
forever to God and His service. What 
peace, what happiness, this gives me ! 



FATHER HECKEE 57 

To live alone for His love, and to love 
all for His love, in His love, and with 
His love. ' 7 After the ceremony he wrote 
to his brother John, telling him to can- 
eel all the business agreements between 
them. " All this I leave to your judg- 
ments ; and as for me, dear brothers 
John and George, in respect to the busi- 
ness, you may regard me as though I had 
never been connected with it, nor had 
any title or claim upon it whatever. I 
am simply your dear brother Isaac, who 
loves you from the depth of his heart. 
This love, be assured, will never be di- 
minished by any event. Whatever hap- 
pens will only give me new motives 
to love you the more. My conduct is 
under your inspection, yours especially, 
dear John, as being the eldest of us 
three ; and I trust your sincere love for 
me will not let any word or action of 
mine pass unnoticed which may be the 
least unpleasant to you. My love, my 
gratitude, my prayers, to and for you 
all." 



58 FATHEE HECKEE 

Having taken their vows, Brother 
Hecker and Brother Walworth went to 
Wittem, a small town in Holland, some 
thirty miles east of St. Trond. There, in 
an old Capuchin monastery, was the 
house of studies belonging to the Or- 
der. Most of the students were Dutch. 
French was the language spoken, as at 
St. Trond. "Walworth was put in the 
theological department, and Hecker in 
the philosophical. Owing to the strict 
rules, this difference separated the two 
almost entirely. Walworth pursued his 
course, and in two years was ordained 
priest ; but Brother Hecker found the 
greatest difficulty in his studies. His 
mind seemed to himself and to his teach- 
ers heavily stupid. His attention could 
be fixed only with great pains, and his 
memory retained nothing. He prac- 
tised severe asceticism : he fasted, he less- 
ened his sleep, he wore a hair shirt. At 
the end of the first year, apparently, all 
capacity to study had left him. He was 



FATHEE HEOKEE 59 

then put in charge of the sick as his 
sole regular occupation. His stupidity 
seemed to degenerate into folly. At the 
end of the second year the superior 
was at a loss to know what to do. He 
asked Hecker what, in his belief, God 
meant him to do in the future. Hecker 
answered that it seemed to him that 
Providence had led him through differ- 
ent ways of error, and had made him 
acquainted with various classes of per- 
sons in the United States, and with their 
needs, in order that, when he had learned 
the truth, God might employ him to 
bring them into the way of that truth ; 
that his vocation was to labour for the 
conversion of his non- Catholic fellow- 
countrymen ; that, as it was apparent 
that he could not study, God meant to 
aid him by His grace ; and that, if he 
were left to study at those moments in 
which his mind was free, he should be 
able to learn enough to become a priest. 
This plan was followed. Hecker felt 



60 FATHER HECKER 

that he had received intimations from 
the Holy Spirit that he was to convert 
his countrymen. His mind, however, 
was wholly lost in abstraction. He was 
absorbed in mystical thought, and the 
common facts with which studies were 
necessarily connected found no point at 
which they could lay hold of his interest. 
"God, at times, seemed to demand of 
me a frightful and heroic abandon- 
ment of my soul to His good pleas- 
ure. God alone knows how to ex- 
ercise the soul in virtue, and the Holy 
Spirit is its only true master in the spir- 
itual life. Not only did the spirit of 
God excite and elicit in me voluntary 
acts of self-abandonment, but often my 
soul was as if stripped of all support, 
and placed, as it were, over a dark and 
unfathomable abyss, and thus I was 
made to see that my only hope was to 
give myself up wholly to Him. The 
words of Job well express this purga- 
tion of the soul when he says, 'The 



FATHEE HECKBE 61 

arrows of the Lord are in me, the rage 
whereof drinketh up my spirit ; and the 
terrors of the Lord war against me.' . . . 
Sometimes these pains penetrate into the 
remotest and most secret chambers of 
the soul. The faculties are in such an 
intensive purgation that, from the exces- 
sive pain which this subtle and purifying 
fire causes they are suspended from 
their ordinary activity, and the soul, 
incapable of receiving any relief or es- 
caping from its suffering, has nothing 
left but to resign itself to the will and 
good pleasure of God. Though envel- 
oped with an unseen but no less real 
fire, suffering in every part, limb, and 
fibre from indescribable pains, fixed like 
one who should be forced to look the sun 
constantly in the face at mid- day, she 
is, nevertheless, content, for she has a 
secret consciousness that God is the cause 
of all her sufferings, and, not only con- 
tent, — she would suffer still more for 
His love." 



62 FATHEE HECKEE 

Hecker said afterward, "The time 
in my whole life when I felt I had 
gained the greatest victory by self-exer- 
tion was when, after weeks of labour, 
I was able to recite the Pater Foster 
in Latin." Hecker' s own consciousness 
that he had been brought under special 
influences of divine grace from boy- 
hood was so strong that his superior, 
Pere L'Hoir, thought the same, and sent 
to him all the students who had difficul- 
ties of a spiritual nature ; and, in spite of 
his mortification at his inability to study, 
his inward peace was not disturbed. He 
writes to his brother John : u As for me, 
I regret nothing so much as that I have 
not a thousand lives to sacrifice to His 
service and love. Yes, I love you all 
more than I ever did, and I would count 
nothing as a cost for your present and 
eternal good. Tet, by the grace of God, 
I love my Saviour infinitely, infinitely, 
infinitely more." Also, he writes to his 
mother : " There have been times when, 



FATHEE HECKEE 63 

considering the wickedness of the world, 
sensible of its miseries and my own, 
and at the same time beholding ob- 
scurely and, as it were, tasting the 
things of heaven, I have longed and 
wished to be separated from the body. 
But, when coming back to myself and 
thinking that with the aid of grace I 
can still increase in God's love, and 
hence love Him more in consequence 
for all eternity, I feel willing to love 
and suffer until the last day, if by this 
I should acquire but one drop more of 
Divine love in my heart. " 

His spiritual experiences at Wittem 
were of the kind that we read of in the 
lives of saints. He says: " Sometimes 
I have felt singularly present and in in- 
timate communion with certain of the 
saints, such as Saint Francis of Assisi, 
Saint Bonaventura, Saint Thomas, Saint 
Peter of Alcantara, our holy father Al- 
phonsus, etc. During this time — and 
sometimes it is for many days — the life, 



64 FATHER HECKEE 

the virtues, the spirit with which the 
saint acted, occupy almost exclusively my 
mind. I seem to feel their presence 
much more intimately and really than 
that of those who are around me. I un- 
derstand and comprehend them better, 
and experience a more salutary influence 
from them than perhaps I would have 
done, had I lived and been with them in 
their time. . . . Twice I remember hav- 
ing experienced in this manner the pres- 
ence of Our Blessed Lord. While this 
lasted, I felt myself altogether another 
person. . . . His presence excited in me 
a greater love and esteem for the Chris- 
tian virtues than I could have acquired 
otherwise in years and years. ?? 

Although Hecker surrendered himself 
so completely to this inner mysticism, 
and held so fixedly his purpose of devo- 
tion to the divine will, and though his 
mind had wandered so far from the path 
of ordinary minds that his superiors 
marvelled at his stupidity and his 



FATHEE HECKEE 65 

brethren deemed him a fool, yet the 
genuine health and sanity of his nature 
showed itself in unmistakable signs. At 
St. Trond on July 4 the American nov- 
ices told their superior that this was 
their great national holiday, and asked 
leave to celebrate it. He inquired how 
they celebrated it. "By shooting off 
fire- crackers." There were no fire- 
crackers. Their next suggestion was a 
grand military parade. That plan over- 
ruled, Hecker and Walworth cried out, 
" Gingerbread ! " So they were sent 
off for a long day's walk, with their 
pockets full of gingerbread. 

At Wittem a bishop from hard by, 
who paid the house a visit, said that he 
could read English, but never had heard 
it spoken, and that he should be obliged 
to them if they would speak something 
in English for him. Walworth and 
Hecker put their heads together, and at 
once recited u Peter Piper picked a 
peck of pickled peppers. ,? After listen- 



66 FATHEE HECKEE 

ing to English prose, the bishop asked to 
hear an English song ; and the two young 
men sang " There were three crows sat 
on a tree, — caw — caw — caw. ? ' 

At Wittem, Hecker baked bread for 
the whole community during almost all 
his stay. He also carried in the fuel. 

In August, 1848, Walworth was or- 
dained priest ; and the two young men 
were sent to Clapham, London, to a new 
foundation of the Order. Walworth was 
sent on into Worcestershire, but Hecker 
stayed at Clapham. After Hecker had 
been there a year, he was found to have 
acquired enough knowledge through his 
irregular studies to fit him for ordina- 
tion. He was ordained first sub- deacon, 
then deacon, and on October 23, 1849, 
in his thirtieth year, he was ordained 
priest by Bishop Wiseman. He spent 
the next year mainly in parochial duties 
at Clapham. 



VL 

In the beginning of 1851, together with 
Father "Walworth, Hecker was sent back 
to America by Father Bernard, the new 
Provincial of the Eedemptorist houses 
in the United States. The United States 
had lately been made a separate prov- 
ince. The Fathers sailed from Havre on 
January 27, 1851, in the Helvetia, and 
reached New York, after a bad voyage, 
on March 19. They went to the convent 
in Third Street, and on April 6 opened 
the first mission in St. Joseph's Church, 
Washington Place. 

The brethren of the Most Holy Ee- 
deemer bind themselves by the monas- 
tic vows. Their chief purpose, as has 
been said, is to conduct missions, — pe- 
riods lasting from one week to a month, 
and devoted to religious instruction and 
exhortation, — at which the Fathers, as 
missionaries, urge the congregation of 
Catholics to mend their lives and to 



68 FATHEE HECKEE 

come back to the life of the spirit. Mis- 
sions find their equivalent in Protestant 
churches in revival meetings, The exer- 
cises are held by the Fathers in some 
parish church. It is customary to give 
moral instruction on the sacraments or 
commandments in the morning, and 
short doctrinal instruction and the mis- 
sion sermon — called the great sermon — 
at night. Father Hecker felt that he 
lacked the qualifications of a preacher, 
and asked that work be given him as 
chaplain of a prison or of some public 
institution of charity. But his superior 
sent him upon the missions, to deliver 
not the great sermon, but the doctrinal 
or moral instruction, having first care- 
fully schooled him what to say. To this 
work Hecker gave himself with ardour. 
He travelled about the United States 
and into the British Provinces, going 
from parish to parish, meeting many 
priests, gathering knowledge of human 
needs, and especially of the needs of the 



FATHEE HECKEE 69 

Catholic Church in America, and gradu- 
ally becoming so proficient that no man, 
it is said, equalled him as a doctrinal 
and moral instructor. His manner of 
speaking is described by them that knew 
him as frank, clear, lively, and with an 
element of humour. His tall figure, his 
pale blue eyes, his ruddy brown hair, 
presented a very attractive appearance. 
He could, better than any of the other 
brothers, depict true sorrow, teach how 
to make hearty confession, and set forth 
the worth of virtue and the dignity of 
the Christian state. In the confessional 
— of which he said "no school of per- 
fection can equal the self-denial necessary 
to hear confessions well" — he was most 
kind and patient. 

The little band of Eedemptorist mis- 
sionaries consisted of Fathers Bernard, 
Hecker, Hewit, and Walworth. Father 
Bernard was superior for a year or two, 
then he was recalled to Europe. He 
was succeeded by Father Alexander, 



70 FATHER HECKEE 

and he, not long after, by Father Wal- 
worth. Subsequently the band was 
joined by Father Deshon and by Father 
Baker. For six years Father Hecker 
laboured in this field, yet he felt that 
this was not the way in which he could 
put his natural gifts to their best use in 
the service of the Divine Spirit. He 
felt himself a special servant of God for 
the conversion of the American people. 
"Such strong and deep impulses, and so 
vast in their reach, took possession of 
my soul on my return to the United 
States in regard to the conversion of the 
American people that, on manifesting 
my interior to one of the most spiritually- 
enlightened and experienced Fathers of 
the Congregation on the subject to ob- 
tain his direction, he bade me not to 
resist these interior movements, they 
came from God ; and that God would 
yet employ me in accordance with 
them." He tells how he first was 
moved to set his hand to begin his real 



FATHEK HECKBE 71 

vocation: "The blessings of God npon 
onr missions were most evident and most 
abundant, and my share in them most 
consoling, as usually the most aban- 
doned sinners fell to my lot. But, holy 
and important as the exercises of the 
missions among Catholics are, still this 
work did not correspond to my interior 
attrait ; and, though exhausted and fre- 
quently made ill from excessive fatigue 
in these duties, yet my ardent and con- 
stant desire to do something for my non- 
Catholic countrymen led me to take up 
my pen. That took place as follows : 
One day, alone in my cell, the thought 
suddenly struck me how great were my 
•privileges and my joy since my becom- 
ing a Catholic, and how great were my 
troubles, my agony of soul, before this 
event ! Alas ! how many of my former 
friends and acquaintances, how many of 
the great body of the American people, 
were in the same most painful position ! 
Cannot something be done to lead them 



72 FATHEB HEOKEE 

to a knowledge of the truth ? Perhaps, 
if the way that divine Providence had 
led me to the Church was shown to them, 
many of them might in this way be led 
also to see the truth. This thought, and 
with it the hope of inducing young men 
to enter into religious orders, produced 
in a few months from my pen a book 
entitled Questions of the Soul." This 
book endeavours to show how, through 
the Catholic Church, the deep yearnings 
of man for a union with something out- 
side of and greater than himself may be 
satisfied ; how the satisfaction of those 
great yearnings is proof that that 
Church, by its sacraments, is the chosen 
means of God to bring man into com- 
munion with Himself. Some chapters 
of the book are occupied by an indirect 
account of Hecker's own experience : 
others discuss the inadequacy of Protes- 
tantism. He also wrote a second book 
entitled Aspirations of Nature, in which 
he sets forth the insufficiency of the 



FATHER HBCKEE 73 

unaided reason to satisfy the needs of 
the intellect, and argues that divine 
revelation is necessary to supplement 
reason, and that the Catholic Church 
truly embodies divine revelation. These 
two books were written during the years 
1852 to 1857. 



VII. 

In the spring of 1857 it was proposed 
to found a new house of the Order either 
in New York City or in Newark, New 
Jersey, which should be the headquar- 
ters of the American members of the 
Order, and where the language in com- 
mon use should be English, to the end 
that the Order might come into closer 
contact with the English-speaking citi- 
zens of this country. Bishop Bayley, of 
Newark, and Archbishop Hughes, of 
New York, had each made application 
for such a foundation ; but the superiors 
of the Order both in this country and in 
Eome misinterpreted the purposes and 
hopes of the American Fathers, and re- 
fused permission. To efface this mis- 
understanding and to explain more 
clearly than was possible by letters their 
purposes in desiring the new foundation, 
the Fathers decided that one of their 
number should go to Borne and state 



FATHER HEOKEE 75 

their case to the General (Rector Major) 
of the Order. They chose Father 
Hecker. He sailed on August 5, 1857, 
and arrived at Rome on August 26. 

This journey was a turning-point in 
Father Hecker' s life, and was the cause 
of founding the Paulist community. He 
was charged with disobedience in going 
to Rome without the requisite permis- 
sion. This charge raised a question of 
canon law. The constitution of the 
Order contained an article which pro- 
vided that no member should go to 
Rome, to lay a matter before the Rector 
Major, without permission from his su- 
periors, except under certain excep- 
tional circumstances which the member 
in his conscience deemed to justify the 
journey. On joining the Order, Father 
Hecker subscribed to this constitution ; 
he owed it obedience, and obtained cer- 
tain rights under it. In 1855 a general 
Chapter of the Order undertook to 
change this article of the constitution. 



76 FATHEE HECKEE 

It restricted to Provincials the right to 
go to Eome without permission in excep- 
tional cases, and denied that right to all 
others unless they should first obtain ex- 
press permission from the Eector Major. 
An alteration of the constitution, how- 
ever, did not become legally operative 
until it was approved by the Holy See. 
This proposed change had been sub- 
mitted to the Holy See, and was held 
under advisement ; it had not been pro- 
mulgated nor approved at that time. 
But there was also another point in 
Father Hecker's way. The Eector 
Major, in consequence of a flagrant 
breach of this rule not in any way con- 
nected with these American Fathers, had 
addressed a circular letter to the Ameri- 
can Province, in which, referring to this 
proposed change in the constitution, he 
stated : " In the General Chapter of 1855 
it was declared that any one would de- 
serve expulsion who should go to Eome 
without the express permission of the 



FATHER HECKEE 77 

Eector Major. And I hereby declare 
any one who shall leave America with- 
out permission expelled, ipso facto, from 
the Order. " This command obviously 
restricted a right secured to the members 
of the Order by the original constitu- 
tion. Father Hecker and his friends 
believed that the Eector Major had ex- 
ceeded his power in issuing such an 
order. The Provincial, apparently un- 
willing to take the responsibility of de- 
ciding a point of canon law, and not 
feeling at liberty to disregard the letter 
of the Eector Major, declined to give 
Father Hecker the desired permission ; 
nevertheless, he gave him in writing 
a statement bearing witness that he 
had been a good Eedemptorist, and 
that up to that time his superiors had 
been fully satisfied with him. The 
question of right to take the journey 
was one of canon law, but no doubt be- 
hind it lay a question of policy, as to 
which there was some feeling, whether 



78 FATHER HECKEE 

it was better that the American Fathers 
should act in concert as an English- 
speaking body with greater indepen- 
dence than theretofore or that the 
Europeans should keep absolute control 
of the Order in this country. There is 
no doubt that Father Hecker believed 
that he was acting wholly according to 
his duty and within his rights under the 
constitution of the Order. He had per- 
mission to go from the head of the house 
in New York j and he had explained 
the matter fully to the Provincial. He 
set upon his errand with a conscience 
perfectly clear. His brother George 
paid his travelling expenses. The ac- 
ceptance of this money was also made a 
charge against him as a violation of his 
vow with respect to poverty. 

On August 29 the General of the 
Order, deeming Father Hecker's journey 
to Eome a violation of his vows of obedi- 
ence and poverty, after having received 
him in the midst of his council, without 



PATHEE HECKEE 79 

warning, without giving him an oppor- 
tunity to speak in self-defence, delivered 
sentence against him, expelling him 
from the Order. Father Hecker in 
utter amazement fell on his knees, and 
bowed his head. He went out, and 
prostrated himself before the Blessed 
Sacrament, returned to the council, 
and on his knees begged the General 
to consider his case further. The Gen- 
eral refused, saying that his sense of 
duty would not allow him to act other- 
wise than as he had done, and added 
that he did not mean to condemn Father 
Hecker for any inward sin, but for his 
external conduct. Father Hecker ap- 
pealed to the Propaganda, and delivered 
his credentials — letters from Archbishop 
Hughes, Bishop Bayley, and others, orig- 
inally intended for the Eector Major — 
to Cardinal Barnabo, prefect, and to 
Archbishop Bedini, secretary of the 
Propaganda. Among these letters were 
some from the four American Fathers, 



80 FATHER HECKEE 

stating that they shared in the respon- 
sibility of Father Hecker' s journey to 
Rome, and naming him as their repre- 
sentative in the matters for which he 
went. Hecker at once won the sym- 
pathy and friendship of Cardinal Bar- 
nabo and of Archbishop Bedini. Dr. 
Bernard Smith, professor of dogmatic 
theology in the College of the Propa- 
ganda, and subsequently abbot of St. 
Paul without-the-walls, Bishop Con- 
nolly, of New Brunswick, and Mon- 
signor Kirby, of the Irish College, es- 
poused his cause warmly. Hecker won 
other friends. He also both made him- 
self known and helped his cause by writ- 
ing an article in the Civilta Cattolica, 
a leading Catholic journal, to show that 
the people of the United States, the 
freest in the world, were by no means 
the most difficult to convert, but were 
ripe for Catholic doctrines. He also 
converted one Brown, an American 
artist of some note in Rome. He did 



FATHEE HECKEE 81 

all he could for the success of his cause ; 
but he was sick at heart. "They have 
driven me out of the home of my heart 
and love." He writes to his American 
brethren : " Our affairs are in the hands 
of God. I hope no one will feel dis- 
couraged, nor fear for me. All that is 
needed to bring the interests of God to a 
successful issue is grace, grace, grace ; 
and this is obtained by prayer. And if 
the American Fathers will only pray 
and get others to pray, and not let 
any one have the slightest reason to 
bring a word against them in our 
present crisis, God will be with us 
and help us, and Our Lady will take 
good care of us. So far no step taken 
in our past need be regretted. If it 
were to be done again, it would ' have 
my consent. The blow given to me I 
have endeavoured to receive with humil- 
ity and in view of God. It has not pro- 
duced any trouble in my soul, nor made 
me waver in the slightest degree in my 



82 FATHEE HEOKEE 

confidence in God or my duty toward 
Him. Let us not be impatient. God is 
with us, and will lead us if we confide in 
Him." 

His adversaries were, no doubt, men 
of position and influence. The General 
of the Order had his supporters. Nor 
were they lacking who felt that these 
young American priests had been some- 
what too self-confident and forth-putting 
in their plan of freeing themselves to 
some extent, at least, of European con- 
trol, and in that, instead of yielding 
meekly to the wishes of their Provincial, 
they had sent an ambassador, as it were, 
to Eome, to insist upon their own way. 
The Eoman Court and its followers had 
not yet recovered from the shock of 
1848, and felt a slight tremour at 
any sign of independence. So there 
were many who in utmost honesty 
deemed Father Hecker a standard-bearer 
of radicalism and rebellion. It could 
hardly be expected that Italian prelates 



FATHEE HECKEE 83 

and dignitaries should understand or 
sympathise with eager young mission- 
aries from New York. 

The Propaganda seemed favourable to 
the Americans, but it soon became ob- 
vious that Father Hecker's reinstate- 
ment would not tend to maintain har- 
mony in the American branch of the 
Order. It was suggested that the Fathers 
should petition the Pope for a separate 
organisation under the rule of Saint 
Alphonsus, but directly subject to the 
Holy See, thereby splitting the Ameri- 
can branch of the Order in two. It was 
also suggested that the separate organi- 
sation should be subject to the Cisalpine 
Eedemptorists, at that time an indepen- 
dent congregation. There was another 
plan, the first failing, that the American 
Fathers be released from their vows with 
a view to forming a new organisation of 
their own under the direction of the 
bishops and of the Holy See. A pe- 
tition, following these various sugges- 



84 FATHEE HECKEE 

tions in their sequence, was drawn up 
and signed by the four Fathers remain- 
ing in America, — Walworth, He wit, 
Deshon, and Baker. This was a novel 
course of action suggested by the course 
of circumstances. In the beginning the 
American Fathers had not the slightest 
idea of a possible separation from the 
Order j but the summary expulsion of 
Father Hecker, and considerations aris- 
ing during the progress of the appeal, 
made it apparent that some change 
would come about. Father Hecker' s 
own views are clear from his letters to 
his American brethren. 

October 5, 1857. i i You will remem- 
ber, and I hope, before this reaches you, 
will have answered my proposition in 
my last note, whether or not you would 
be willing to form an independent 
band of missionaries to be devoted to 
the great wants of the country. I have 
considered and reconsidered, and prayed 
and prayed ; and, in spite of my fears, 



FATHEE HECKEE 85 

this seems to me the direction in which 
Divine Providence calls us. . . . With 
all the difficulties, dangers, and struggles 
that another [community] movement 
presents before me, I feel more and more 
convinced that it is this that Divine 
Providence asks of us. ... If you are 
prepared to move in this direction, it 
would be best, and, indeed, necessary, 
not only to write to me your assent, but 
also a memorial to the Propaganda — to 
Cardinal Barnabo — stating the interests 
and wants of religion and of the country, 
and then petition to be permitted to 
turn your labours in this direction. . . . 
I endeavour to keep close to God, to keep 
up my confidence in His protection, and 
in the aid of Our Blessed Lady. I pray 
for you all. You cannot forget me in 
your prayers. ?? 

October 26. "As for my part, I do 
not see one step ahead, but at the same 
time I never felt so closely embraced in 
the arms of Divine Providence. " 



86 FATHEE HECKEE 

November 12. i c My present impression 
is that neither union with the Cisalpine 
Fathers nor separation as a band of 
[independent Eedemptorist] mission- 
aries in the United States will be ap- 
proved of here. . . . What appears to 
me more and more probable is that we 
shall have to start entirely upon our own 
basis. This is, perhaps, the best of all, 
all things considered. . . . Such a move- 
ment has, from the beginning, seemed to 
me the one to which Divine Providence 
calls us, but I always felt timid as long 
as any door was left open for us to act 
in the Congregation. . . . I feel prepared 
to take this step with you without hesi- 
tation and with great confidence. ... I 
should have been glad, as soon as my 
dismission was given, to have started on 
in such a movement. But then it was 
my first duty to see whether this work 
could not be accomplished by the Con- 
gregation [of the Most Holy Eedeemer] ; 
and, besides, I was not sure, as I now am, 



FATHEE HEOKEE 87 

of your views being the same as mine. 
. . . All indicates the will of Divine 
Providence in onr regard, and gives me 
confidence. . . . 

" We should take our present missions 
as the basis of our unity and activity ; 
at the same time not be exclusively 
restricted to them, but leave ourselves 
at liberty to adapt ourselves to the wants 
which may present themselves in our 
country. Were the question presented 
to me to restrict myself exclusively to 
missions, in that case I should feel in 
conscience bound to obtain from holy 
men a decision on the question whether 
God had not pointed out another field 
for me. . . . Taking our missions and 
our present mode of life as the ground- 
work, the rest will have to be left to 
Divine Providence, the character of the 
country, and our own spirit of faith and 
good common sense. ?? 

Father Hecker considered the matter 
most devoutly. He consulted men of re- 



88 FATHER HECKER 

pute for wisdom and holiness. He had 
constant recourse to prayer for divine 
guidance. He drew up an elaborate 
statement of his own religious life and 
experiences and of the condition of 
religion in America, and submitted it, 
with the question whether or no there 
was sufficient evidence of a special voca- 
tion from God for him to undertake such 
a work, to Cardinal Barnabo, Arch- 
bishop Bedini, Father Francis, his di- 
rector while in Borne, a Passionist, 
Father Gregorio, a Carmelite, and 
Father Druelle, of the Congregation of 
the Holy Cross. Hecker chose these 
men as most spiritually enlightened, and 
the fittest wisely to counsel him. They 
all answered the question in the affirm- 
ative. Hecker had the support of many 
of the American hierarchy — ^Arch- 
bishop Hughes of New York, Archbishop 
Kenrick of Baltimore, Archbishop Pur- 
cell of Cincinnati, Bishop Bayley of 
Newark, Bishop Spalding of Louisville, 



FATHEE HECKEE 89 

Bishop Lynch of Charleston, Bishop 
Barry of Savannah, Bishop De Goes- 
briand of Burlington — all of whom sent 
testimonials. 

After examination by the Propaganda 
the case went to the Pope, who sought 
the decision of the Congregation of Bish- 
ops and Eegulars. Cardinal Barnabo 
advocated Hecker's cause before that 
tribunal. Father Hecker was granted 
an interview with the Pope ; he assured 
him that he believed that his Holiness' s 
decision would be God's decision, and 
that, be it what it might, he would 
humbly submit to it. 

On March 6, 1858, the decree of the 
Congregation of Bishops and Eegulars 
was given forth. It recited the petition 
of the American Fathers, setting forth 
the different suggestions contained in it, 
and denied the request to continue the 
Americans in any way as a separate 
branch of the Order of the Most Holy 
Bedeemer, and continued : ' i Since, how- 



90 FATHEK HEOKEE 

ever, it was represented to his Holiness 
that the petitioners spare no labour in the 
prosecution of the holy missions, in the 
conversion of souls, and in the dissemi- 
nation of Christian doctrine, and are for 
this reason commended by many bishops, 
it seemed more expedient to his Holiness 
to withdraw them from the said Congre- 
gation, that they might apply themselves 
to the prosecution of the works of the 
sacred ministry under the direction of 
the local bishops. Wherefore his Holi- 
ness, by the tenor of this decree, and by 
his apostolic authority, does dispense 
from their simple vows and from that of 
permanence in the Congregation the said 
priests — viz., Clarence Walworth, Au- 
gustine Hewit, George Deshon, and 
Francis Baker, together with the priest 
Isaac Hecker, who has joined himself to 
their petition in respect to dispensation 
from the vows — and declares them to be 
dispensed and entirely released, so that 
they no longer belong to the said 



FATHEE HECKEE 91 

Congregation. And his Holiness con- 
fidently trusts that, under the direction 
and jurisdiction of the local bishops, ac- 
cording to the prescription of the sacred 
Canons, the above-mentioned priests will 
labour, by work, example, and word, in 
the vineyard of the Lord, and give them- 
selves with alacrity to the eternal salva- 
tion of souls, and promote with all their 
power the sanctification of their neigh- 
bours. " 

The decree, it will be seen, deals solely 
with the petition, and makes no reference 
to Father Hecker's expulsion from the 
Order ; but, as it expressly declares him 
as well as the others to be entirely re- 
leased from the vows, so that he thereby 
ceased to be a member of the Congrega- 
tion, it is obvious that the decree dealt 
with him as a present member of the 
Order, and that the expulsion was 
treated as ineffectual. Hecker, acting 
against his own wish, but in deference to 
the opinion of Cardinal Barnabo, had 



92 FATHEB HECKEE 

not signed the petition. Afterward, 
learning of the Pope's intended action, 
he wrote a note, which was submitted 
to the Pope, stating that, if the other 
Fathers were released from their vows 
and his expulsion were set aside, he 
would be content to accept his dispensa- 
tion, also. 

Hecker felt that this was a most happy- 
issue out of his afflictions. "I loot 
upon this settlement of our difficulties as 
the work of Divine Providence, and my 
prayer is that it may make me humble, 
modest, and renew my desire to conse- 
crate myself wholly to God's designs. " 
He had a second interview with the Pope, 
who treated him with great kindness. 
He returned soon after to America, car- 
rying with him a special blessing from 
the Holy Father for the work of the 
American Fathers in making a new re- 
ligious congregation. He bore with him 
also this letter from Cardinal Barnabo, 
as Prefect of the Sacred Congregation 
i ' De Propaganda Fide ? ? : — 



FATHEE HECKEE 93 

"To each and every one who will 
read this letter of ours, we declare and 
testify that the Eev. Isaac Hecker, secu- 
lar priest, is free from all ecclesiastical 
censure, and that he is a man most illus- 
trious for his religious zeal and sacer- 
dotal virtues, most active in cultivating 
the vineyard of the Lord, especially in 
the United States of North America, 
and for that reason especially beloved, 
not only by very many bishops there, 
but also by the Sacred Congregation of 
Propaganda. 

"We commend him most strongly in 
the Lord to the American bishops, now 
that he is leaving Eome for America, 
and ask that they receive him kindly ; 
that they allow him to celebrate the 
most holy sacrifice of the mass ; and that 
they do him all those good offices of 
charity which they think worthy a man 
who is truly religious and a great worker 
for the salvation of souls. " 



VIII. 

Father Hecker arrived in New 
York in May, 1858, and the brethren 
immediately made plans and arrange- 
ments for the new organisation. Noth- 
ing was determined without the fullest 
consideration. Father Walworth did 
not wholly agree with the others, and 
withdrew, but joined them again in a 
few years. The others elected Father 
Hecker their superior, and drew up a 
Programme of Eule. This was approved 
by Archbishop Hughes, to whom they 
submitted it on July 7, 1858. Saint 
Paul, as apostle to the Gentiles, was 
chosen as patron ; and the name they 
took was The Missionary Priests of Saint 
Paul the Apostle. They are familiarly 
known as the Paulist Fathers. The 
habit adopted was black, with a narrow 
linen collar, and was buttoned across the 
breast, and girded in at the waist. The 
Programme of Eule adopted an order of 



FATHEE HEOKEE 95 

spiritual exercises similar to that ob- 
served by the Eedemptorists. Instead 
of vows the members made a perpet- 
ual voluntary agreement, affirming that 
they were fully determined to promote 
their sanctification by leading a life in 
all essential respects similar to that led 
in the religious orders. The observance 
of obedience and poverty was enjoined 
upon the members, and also of the daily 
and periodical exercises of community 
life. Their labour was to be chiefly to 
conduct missions, but to do parochial 
work as well. The archbishop's ap- 
proval of the Programme of Eule gave 
the Fathers the canonical status looked 
to by the decree of the Congregation of 
Bishops and Eegulars. Subsequently 
the Holy See granted permission to the 
archbishop to establish the Paulist In- 
stitute in his diocese, with the consent 
of his suffragans, which consent was ob- 
tained, and the Institute canonically 
established. 



96 FATHEE HECKER 

For some time the little community 
had no home ; but plans for establishing 
a home and parish in New York had 
already been made, and the site on 59th 
Street, just west of 9th Avenue, at that 
time unopened, a spot more in the coun- 
try than in the city, was selected. 
Money was raised, the land bought, and 
on Trinity Sunday, June 19, 1859, the 
corner-stone of the new building was 
laid by Archbishop Hughes. The new 
house and chapel were completed in 
November, and the work of the Fathers 
as parish priests began. About this 
time Father Eobert Beverly Tillotson 
and Father Alfred Young joined them. 
Father Walworth came back, and this 
increase in numbers enabled them to 
prosecute both their missionary and par- 
ish work more vigorously. 

To one who has not had the privilege 
of knowing Father Hecker in person, his 
active, energetic life, his eager interest in 
doing, his fertility in plans, from the time 



FATHER HECKEE 97 

of his journey to Eome until his health 
failed him, are a continual surprise. 
The contemplative, meditative spirit, ab- 
sorbed in itself, and in visions and com- 
munions known only to itself, which in 
its time of preparation had seemed so 
lethargic and dazed, even in the presence 
of so slight a demand upon its activity as 
study for the priesthood, suddenly stands 
up and shakes itself, instinct with life 
and zeal for active wrestling with the 
enemies of right. It is hardly human 
for a man so to begin anew as if his 
old self had been sloughed off. The 
seeds of active life, which showed them- 
selves somewhat in his boyish years be- 
fore he went to Brook Farm, had lain in 
the rich soil of his ardent nature, ger- 
minating and swelling till their ap- 
pointed time. These two sides of Father 
Hecker's nature inclined him toward the 
two main purposes to which he devoted 
his life — obedience to the inspiration of 
the Holy Spirit, and conversion of his 



98 FATHEB HECKEE 

fellows to that obedience by using all the 
influences of ordinary life as instruments 
and assistant agencies. With all his 
confidence in the inward impulses which, 
according to his experience, come to the 
honest seeker after spiritual life, he rec- 
ognised the danger of wayward and vain 
doctrines ; and he had the deepest con- 
viction that the Catholic Church was 
the representative of God on earth, and 
that by her teaching every man could 
judge the truth of his own inward im- 
pulses. He always insisted upon u abso- 
lute and unswerving loyalty to the au- 
thority of the Church, wherever and 
however expressed, as God's authority 
upon earth and for all time." Never- 
theless, he believed that all men, as 
children of God, may have direct com- 
munion with the Holy Spirit ; but that 
they must make themselves ready for 
that great blessing by endeavour, by 
prayers, and by the sacraments. "The 
Holy Spirit is the inspiration of the 



FATHEE HECKEE 99 

inner life of the regenerate man, and in 
that life is his Superior and Director. 
That His guidance may become more 
and more immediate in an interior life, 
and the soul's obedience more and more 
instinctive, is the object of the whole 
external order of the Church, including 
the sacramental system. ... It should 
ever be kept in view that the practice 
of the virtues is not only for their own 
sake and to obtain merit, but mainly in 
order to remove all obstacles in the way 
of the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and 
to assist the soul in following His opera- 
tions with docility. . . . True spiritual 
direction consists in discovering the ob- 
stacles in the way of the Divine guid- 
ance, in aiding and encouraging the 
penitent to remove them, and in teach- 
ing how the interior movements of the 
Holy Spirit may be recognised as well 
as in stimulating the soul to fidelity 
and docility to His movements. . . . The 
whole aim of the science of Christian 



100 FATHEK HEOKEE 

perfection is to instruct men how to re- 
move tlie hindrances in the way of the 
action of the Holy Spirit, and how to 
cultivate those virtues which are most 
favourable to His solicitations and in- 
spirations. Thus the sum of spiritual 
life consists in observing and yielding 
to the movements of the Spirit of God 
in our soul, employing for this pur- 
pose all the exercises of prayer, spiritual 
reading, the practice of virtues, and 
good works. . . . The radical and ade- 
quate remedy for all the evils of our age, 
and the source of all true progress, con- 
sists in increased attention and fidelity 
to the action of the Holy Spirit in the 
soul. c Thou shalt send forth Thy spirit, 
and they shall be created ; and Thou 
shalt renew the face of the earth. 7 " . . . 
With regard to the contradiction that 
might seem likely to occur between the 
authority of the interior directions and 
that of the Church he says : " The action 
of the Holy Spirit embodied visibly in 



FATHEE HECKEE 101 

the authority of the Church and the 
action of the Holy Spirit dwelling in- 
visibly in the soul form one inseparable 
synthesis ; and he who has not a clear 
conception of this twofold action of the 
Holy Spirit is in danger of running into 
one or the other, and sometimes into 
both, of these extremes, either of which 
is destructive of the end of the Church. 
The Holy Spirit, in the external author- 
ity of the Church, acts as the infallible 
interpreter and criterion of divine reve- 
lation. The Holy Spirit in the soul acts 
as the divine Life-giver and Sanctifier. 
It is of the highest importance that 
these two distinct offices of the Holy 
Spirit should not be confounded. . 
What must one do in order to favour the 
reception of the Holy Spirit and secure 
fidelity to His guidance when received ? 
First, receive the Sacraments, the di- 
vinely instituted channels of grace : one 
will scarcely persevere in living in the 
state of grace, to say nothing of se- 



102 FATHEE HEGKEE 

curing a close union with God, who 
receives Holy Communion only once or 
twice a year. Second, practise prayer, 
above all that highest form of prayer, 
assisting at Holy Mass ; then mental and 
vocal prayer, the public offices of the 
Church, and particular devotions accord- 
ing to one's attrait. Third, read spir- 
itual books daily, — the Bible, Lives of 
the Saints, Following of Christ, etc. But 
in all this bear ever in mind, that the 
steady impelling force by which one 
does each of these outward things is the 
inner and secret prompting of the Holy 
Ghost, and that perseverance in them 
is secured by no other aid except the 
same hidden inspiration. Cherish that 
above all, therefore, and in every stage 
of the spiritual life ; be most obedient to 
it, seeking meantime for good counsel 
wherever it is likely to be had. . . . The 
work of the priesthood is to help to guide 
the Christian people, understanding that 
God is always guiding them interiorly. 



FATHEE HECKEE 103 

. . . The guide of the soul is the Holy 
Spirit Himself, and the criterion, or test, 
of possessing that guide is the Divine 
authority of the Church. . . . The sacra- 
ments, prayer, and holy reading, and 
hearing sermons and instructions, are 
the plain external instruments and ac- 
companiments of the visitations of God, 
and are sufficient landmarks for the 
journey of the soul, unless it be led in 
a way altogether extraordinary. And, 
apart from these external marks, no 
matter how you watch for God, His 
visitations are best known by their ef- 
fects. It is after the cause has been 
placed, perhaps some considerable time 
after, that the faith, hope, love, or 
sorrow, becomes perceptibly increased, — 
always excepting extraordinary cases. 
Not to 'resist the Spirit 7 is the first 
duty. Fidelity to the divine guidance, 
yielding one's self up lovingly to the 
impulses of virtue as they gently claim 
control of our thoughts, — this is the 
simple duty." 



104 FATHEE HECKEE 

These quotations from Father Hecker 
show his fundamental beliefs. But it 
was not enough for him to enjoy mysti- 
cal communion with the Holy Spirit. 
He must be up and doing, a faithful 
servant in the service of his Master. At 
St. Trond he believed that he received 
intimations from the Holy Spirit that he 
had been chosen as a special instrument 
of God to labour at the conversion of 
this country. His belief grew in depth 
and power until, during his stay at 
Eome, it seemed to him that Providence 
reached out and set his hand to the 
task. Father Hecker thought that the 
differences between nations should not be 
allowed to prevent their union within 
one church. Eather must the individ- 
uality of each nation, wrought out 
through long centuries not without the 
will of God, be used as the instrument 
by which each people shall be brought 
to God. For Italians the Italian char- 
acter must be put to use, for Germans 



FATHER HEOKEE 105 

the German character, and for the 
people of the United States the Ameri- 
can character. Here in this country- 
was a people who in secular matters 
had prospered, who in political matters 
had adopted the new principles of de- 
mocracy, and had made their country a 
place of refuge and a home for the un- 
successful and unfortunate from other 
lands. Had this prosperity, this trust, 
and this generosity flourished in the 
absence of God's blessing? By no 
means. Under Providence, so Father 
Hecker believed, these [results in secular 
matters were due to the freedom and 
independent character of the American 
people. Here, then, was the quality 
that should serve to bring this people, 
for the greater part of Protestant origin 
and suspicious of alien authority, into 
the way of truth as he believed it to be. 
He himself had been born and bred 
among the strongest Protestant sects. 
He had been acquainted with persons of 



106 FATHEE HECKEE 

various fortunes and conditions in life. 
He had wandered through most devious 
ways, and had all the time felt strong 
within him the spirit of freedom and 
independence. Was he not especially 
fitted to show to his countrymen that 
not the Protestant Church, but the 
Catholic Church, was in accord with the 
principles of true liberty, with the 
affirmations of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, and the inclinations of free 
men? Hecker was particularly indig- 
nant with the doctrines which he deemed 
especially to mark the Protestant 
Church, of election and of total deprav- 
ity ; and he denounced the inconsistency 
of those doctrines with the belief that all 
men are born free and equal. With 
these beliefs and these hopes he girded 
himself to the task of conversion. 

His first means was the community of 
the Paulist Fathers. He wrote, "The 
controlling thought of my mind for many 
years has been that a body of free men 



FATHEE HECKEE 107 

who love God with all their might, and 
yet know how to cling together, could 
conquer this modern world of ours. ' J He 
desired his community to minister to the 
special needs of the people among whom 
they lived, and to preach the special 
virtues necessary to enable them to meet 
those needs. 1 1 The main purpose of each 
Paulist must be the attainment of per- 
sonal perfection by the practice of those 
virtues without which it cannot be se- 
cured, — mortification, self- denial, de- 
tachment, and the like. By the use of 
these means the grace of God makes the 
soul perfect. The perfect soul is one 
which is guided instinctively by the in- 
dwelling Holy Spirit. To attain to this 
is the end always to be aimed at in the 
practice of the virtues just named. 
Second, zeal for souls ; to labour for the 
conversion of the country to the Catholic 
faith by apostolic work. Parish work is 
a part, an integral part, of Paulist work, 
but not its principal or chief work — and 



108 FATHEE HECKEE 

parish work should be done so as to form 
a part of the main aim, the conversion of 
the non-Catholic people of the country. 
. . . Our vocation is apostolic, — conver- 
sion of souls to the faith, of sinners to re- 
pentance, giving missions, defence of the 
Christian religion by conferences, lect- 
ures, sermons, the pen, the press, and 
the like works. ... He [the Paulist] 
must do the work of the Church. The 
work of the Church, as Church, is to 
render her note of universality more and 
more conspicuous. " . . . But also "a 
Paulist is to emphasise individuality; 
that is, to make individual liberty an 
essential element in every judgment that 
touches the life and welfare of the com- 
munity and that of its members. . . . 
The individuality of a man cannot be 
too strong or his liberty too great when 
he is guided by the Spirit of God." 



IX. 

The Paulist Fathers did regular, faith- 
ful parochial work in a poor parish, con- 
sisting chiefly of labourers and their 
families living in the outskirts of the 
city. They kept up their missions from 
1858 to 1865. In that year Father 
Baker died ; and the little band, becom- 
ing too few, were obliged to forego them. 
Until that time they had held eighty- 
one missions, travelling all over the 
United States and into Canada. They 
preached the special virtues needed by 
the times, — manliness and intelligence. 
They gave doctrinal instruction, and 
they waged continuous war against 
drunkenness and most severely con- 
demned the liquor saloons. 

Father Hecker also delivered lectures 
far and near upon Catholic doctrines 
and Protestant doctrines, with the pur- 
pose of proselytising. Some of the 
titles of these lectures were: "The 



110 FATHEE HECKER 

Church and the Republic," u Luther 
and the Reformation, > ' "How and Why 
I became a Catholic," "The State of 
Religion in the United States." His 
appearance was very dignified. He had 
a tall figure, broad back, large head 
with prominent features, and a long, 
forked beard. His voice, though it had 
no graces, carried well. His gestures 
were simple, but at times very energetic. 
His usual method was to begin by dwell- 
ing upon the American love of liberty 
and capacity for free government, then 
to argue that Protestant doctrines were 
inconsistent therewith, next to explain 
the position of the Catholic Church, and 
to try to persuade his audience that the 
teachings of that Church were in all 
things appropriate and fit for the free- 
dom-loving American. Father Hecker 
was very active in lecturing from 1865 
to 1872, when health began to fail him. 
A third means very dear to his 
heart — for the conversion of his country- 



FATHEE HECKEE 111 

men, was what lie called the Apostolate 
of the Press. He entertained a pro- 
found conviction that all the circum- 
stances and modes of modern life are in 
their nature adaptable as means of 
grace ; and, as among the influences of 
modern life none is greater than the 
press, he desired, and felt that his 
desire was from above, that the press be 
made the servant of God. Not by the 
voice only, but by the written word, 
spread as wide among men as might be, 
and reiterated as often, should the truth 
be published. The absorbing interest of 
the war thwarted for a time Father 
Hecker's plans; but no sooner was the 
war over than in April, 1865, he began 
the publication of The Catholic World, a 
monthly magazine. There were many 
difficulties in his way. His public was 
small, priests were busy, educated lay- 
men were scarce. His contributions 
were few and at first hard to get, so that 
for a year the magazine was chiefly 



112 FATHER HEOKEE 

filled with articles culled from foreign 
magazines and books. After that it 
prospered. It has always had great 
variety of matter, information concern- 
ing thought outside the Church, studies 
in history, controversial discussions, ex- 
positions of Catholic doctrines, literary 
criticism, fiction, and consideration of 
social problems. In 1866 he founded 
The Catholic Publication Society for the 
purpose of publishing such tracts and 
books as might tend to convert Protes- 
tants and confirm Catholics in their 
faith ; and in 1870 he started The Young 
Catholic, a periodical edited by Mrs. 
George Y. Hecker, meant to prevent the 
minds of young Catholics from straying 
from a consciousness of the truths of their 
religion during the temptations and dis- 
tractions of youth. 

The burden of maintaining The Cath- 
olic Publication Society fell mainly on 
the Paulist Fathers. The purpose of the 
society was missionary, and to that end 



FATHEE HECKEE 113 

its publications were always given away 
or else sold at or below cost. Eaising 
the necessary money was a hard matter ; 
but at the meeting of the Second Plenary 
Council of Baltimore, in 1866, Father 
Hecker — whose whole heart was in this 
work — and Archbishop Spalding, by 
their vigorous pleading, persuaded the 
Council to enact a decree that the bish- 
ops " establish branches of this Society 
in their dioceses, . . . [and] shall there- 
fore appoint a yearly collection for their 
support, to be taken up in all the prin- 
cipal churches, or shall make other pro- 
vision for the same purpose according to 
their best judgment. ? ? The Council also, 
in their Pastoral Letter, earnestly urge 
the clergy to give their strong support 
"to the undertaking, which is second to 
none in importance among the subsidiary 
aids which the inventions of modern 
times supply to our ministry for the 
diffusion of Catholic truth. " Father 
Hecker was most happy over his sue- 



114 FATHEE HECKEE 

cess ; and his intention was to establish 
branches everywhere in the United 
States, delegates from which should 
meet regularly and control the whole 
work, thus giving the Catholic Church in 
America the support of a strong body of 
laymen. The decree of the Council 
bears witness to Father Hecker' s power 
over men ; but the needs of the Church 
in building churches and schools, in pro- 
viding priests and teachers for the rapidly 
increasing Catholic population, left the 
dioceses no money to spare for the Pub- 
lication Society. Collections of money 
made were soon spent, and no more came 
in. Thereupon Mr. George V. Hecker 
generously paid the cost. Subsequently, 
finding that he had put much money into 
the work, he was obliged to turn the so- 
ciety into a publishing business. Father 
Hecker was greatly grieved at this lost 
opportunity, but he bore what was for 
him a bitter disappointment with gentle 
submission. 



FATHER HEOKEE 115 

One more attempt lie made to further 
the Apostolate of the Press. In 1871 a 
New York daily paper, a member of the 
Associated Press, was for sale, and could 
be bought for $300, 000. Father Hecker 
jumped at the prospect of a daily news- 
paper, with its first purpose to further 
divine truth. He persuaded various 
rich men to subscribe. Archbishop 
McCloskey headed the list. More than 
half the necessary sum was raised, when 
Hecker fell ill, and the project had to 
be abandoned. There was no man to 
take his place. Yet the Apostolate of 
the Press had spread Father Hecker' s 
fame. In 1869 Pius IX. wrote him an 
autograph letter, commending the vari- 
ous works in which he and the Paulist 
Fathers were engaged, especially this 
work of the press, and bestowing upon 
them all his blessing. 

When the Council of the Vatican was 
called together, Father Hecker was urged 
by his friends to go to Eome ; and Bishop 



116 FATHEE HECKBE 

Eosecrans, of Columbus, Ohio, being 
himself unable to attend the Council, ap- 
pointed Father Hecker his proxy. He 
arrived in Eome in November, 1869 ; 
but he was not allowed to attend the 
Council, because there were so many prel- 
ates present in person that proxies were 
not recognised. The archbishop of 
Baltimore, however, made Hecker his 
theologian, whereby he obtained the 
privileges of reading all the documents of 
the Council, of knowing all that took 
place in it, and of taking part in the de- 
liberations of the American hierarchy, 
which met by themselves to consider the 
interests of the Church in the United 
States. He abstained from taking part 
in the controversy concerning the infalli- 
bility of the Pope, although he had always 
believed in the doctrine. He said: "I 
have always heard the voice of Eome as 
that of truth itself. . . . All I have to say 
is that, if the Eoman Court prevail [in 
the deliberations of the Council], it is 



FATHEE HECKEE 117 

the Holy Ghost who prevails through the 
Eoman Court. " And, after the Coun- 
cil was over, he wrote : "The definition 
of the Vatican Council completes and 
fixes forever the external authority of the 
Church against the heresies and errors of 
the last three centuries. . . . None but 
the declared enemies of the Church and 
misdirected Catholics can fail to see in 
this the directing influence of the Holy 
Ghost. . . . The definition leaves no 
longer any doubt in regard to the au- 
thority of the Chief of the Church. For 
my part, I sincerely thank the Jesuits 
for their influence in bringing it about, 
even though that were as great as some 
people would have us believe. . . . This 
had to be done before the Church could 
resume her normal course of action. 
What is that? Why, the divine ex- 
ternal authority of the Church com- 
pleted, fixed beyond all controversy, her 
attention and that of all her children can 
now be turned more directly to the 



118 FATHEE HECKEE 

divine and interior authority of the Holy 
Ghost in the soul. The whole Church, 
giving her attention to the interior in- 
spirations of the Holy Spirit, will give 
birth to her renewal, and enable her to 
reconquer her place and true position in 
Europe and the whole world. For we 
must never forget that the immediate 
means of Christian perfection is the in- 
terior direction of the Holy Spirit, while 
the test of our being directed by the 
Holy Spirit, and not by our fancies and 
prejudices, is our filial obedience to the 
divine external authority of the Church. 
"If for three centuries the most in- 
fluential schools in the Church gave a 
preponderance in their teaching and spir- 
itual direction to those virtues which are 
in direct relation to the external author- 
ity of the Church, it must be remembered 
that the heresies of that period all aimed 
at the destruction of this authority. The 
character of this teaching, therefore, was 
a necessity. There was no other way of 



FATHEE HECKEE 119 

preserving the children of the Church 
from the danger of this infection. If the 
effect of this teaching made Catholics 
childlike, less manly and active than 
others, this was, under the circum- 
stances, inevitable. 

"The definition of the Vatican Coun- 
cil, thanks to the Jesuits, now gives us 
freedom to turn our attention in another 
direction, and to cultivating other virt- 
ues. If one infidel was equal to two 
Catholics in courage and action in the 
past, in the future one Catholic, moved 
by the Holy Spirit, will be equal to half 
a dozen or a thousand infidels and 
heretics." 

Father Hecker had an interview with 
the Pope, and saw Cardinal Barnabo 
and many old friends, during his stay 
in Eome. He was full of spiritual con- 
fidence, and was sure that he then re- 
ceived special illumination from God on 
the relation between the inner and the 
outer action of the Holy Ghost in sancti- 



120 FATHER HECKER 

fying the soul. He wrote to his brothers' 
family that one day, as he watched rep- 
resentatives of the Catholic Church 
gathered together from the civilised 
world, marching in a throng through 
one of the great piazzas, he hardly kept 
himself from crying out, " Three cheers 
for Paradise, and one for the United 
States. " He also writes: "I return 
with new hope and fresher energy for 
that better future for the Church and 
humanity which is in store for both in 
the United States. This is the convic- 
tion of all intelligent and hopeful minds 
in Europe. They look to the other side 
of the Atlantic, not only with great in- 
terest, but to catch the light which will 
solve the problems of Europe. Our 
course is surely fraught with the interests, 
hopes, and happiness of the race. I 
never felt so much like acquitting myself 
as a Christian and a man. The convic- 
tions which have hitherto directed my 
course have been deepened, confirmed, 



FATHEE HECKEE 121 

and strengthened by recent experience 
here ; and I return to my country a 
better Catholic and more an American 
than ever." 

Father Hecker was always turning 
over in his mind new plans to further 
what he believed to be the cause of God 
in this country. One of the earliest 
notions he had entertained to this end 
was to use the capacities for devotion 
and self-sacrifice in women. This idea 
came to him again forcibly in Eome. 
One day he said Mass in the catacombs 
of St. Agnes in the presence of a small 
company of persons. In that solemn 
spot, hallowed for him by the prayers 
and sufferings of martyrs, he prayed with 
his whole heart. "What did I pray 
for?" he wrote to his brethren. "For 
you all, especially for the future. What 
future? How shall I name it? The 
association of women, in our country, to 
aid the work of God through the Holy 
Church for its conversion. My convic- 



122 FATHEE HECKEE 

tions became fixed, and my determina- 
tion to begin the enterprise consecrated." 
After leaving Eome, lie went to va- 
rious places in Italy ; but the spot that 
drew out his heart was Assisi. "I 
could have kissed the stones of the 
streets of the town when I remembered 
that Saint Francis had trodden these 
same streets, and the love and heroism 
which beat in his heart. ... I said Holy 
Mass at the tomb of Saint Francis, and 
in presence of his body this morning 
— a votive Mass of the Saint. It seems 
I could linger weeks and weeks around 
this holy spot. . . . What Saint Francis 
did for his age one might do for one's 
own. He touched the chords of feeling 
and of aspiration in the hearts of the 
men and women of his time, and organ- 
ised them for action. Saint Dominic 
did the same for the intellectual wants 
of the time. Why not do this for our 
age ? Who shall so touch the springs of 
men's hearts and reach their minds as 



FATHEE HECKEE 123 

to lead them to the desire of united 
action, and organise them so as to bring 
forth great results? There is no doubt 
that the age wants this." 

Father Hecker's deep desire to es- 
tablish the kingdom of God on earth 
found America too narrow for its hopes. 
His passionate confidence in the Ameri- 
can people led him to imagine America 
carrying the gospel back to Europe. 
"The work that Divine Providence has 
called us to do in our own country, were 
its spirit extended through Europe, 
would be the focus of new light and an 
element of regeneration. Our country 
has a providential position in our century 
in relation to Europe, and our efforts to 
Catholicise and sanctify it give it an 
importance, in a religious aspect, of a 
most interesting and significant char- 
acter." 

Full of beliefs, full of hopes, with all 
his convictions strengthened, and with 
an ever-increasing desire to put his 



124 FATHEE HECKBE 

strength into the most enduring work 
for God and the Church, he went back 
to his brethren in New York. 



X. 

From 1871 to 1888 the story of Father 
Hecker is very sad. His health, under- 
mined by the too severe self-denials of 
his youth, gave way. Headaches, dys- 
pepsia, sleeplessness, tormented him. By 
the summer of 1872 he was unable to 
continue at work, and he was sent by 
his physicians to the South and after- 
ward to Europe on a search for health. 
He travelled through Europe, made a 
journey up the Mle, and visited Pales- 
tine. At times he was better, and had 
periods of relief; but, as the years 
went on, his nervous system failed in its 
functions, his blood became thin. For 
four or five years before his death he 
had frequent attacks of angina pectoris. 
But bodily pain was less sad than the 
darkness which seemed to come over his 
spirit. His mind was unaffected, but 
trouble came upon him, sorrow took the 
place of gladness, and it seemed to him 



126 FATHEE HECKEE 

as if lie sat in the desolation of sin. In 
1874 lie writes : " As to my health these 
last ten days, I cannot say much. My 
interior trials have been such that it 
would be impossible that my health 
should improve under them. As long 
as they last, I must expect to suffer. I 
see nothing before me but darkness, and 
there is nothing within my soul but des- 
olation and bitterness. Cut off from all 
that formerly interested me, banished 
as it were from home and country, iso- 
lated from everything, the doors of 
heaven shut, I feel overwhelmed with 
misery and crushed to atoms. . . . There 
remains nothing for me but to confide in, 
to follow, and abandon myself to that 
Guide who has directed me from the be- 
ginning. I read Job, Jeremias, and 
Thomas a Kempis, and meditate on the 
sufferings of Our Lord and the character 
of His death. I recall to mind what I 
have read on these matters in spiritual 
writers and the Lives of the Saints. I 



FATHEE HECKBE 127 

reflect how from the very nature of the 
purification of the soul this darkness, 
bitterness, and desolation must be; but 
not a drop of consolation is distilled into 
my soul. The only words which come 
to my lips are, 'My soul is sad unto 
death ? ; and these I repeat and repeat 
again. At all times, in rising and in 
going to bed, in company and at my 
meals, I whisper them to myself, while 
to others I appear cheerful and join in 
the talk. . . . Withal, I try to have pa- 
tience, resignation, endurance, and trust 
in God, waiting on His guidance and 
leaving all in His hands. . . . My expec- 
tations to return to my former labours are 
not sanguine. It seems to me sometimes 
that I am cut off from these to be pre- 
pared for a deeper and broader basis for 
future action. But whether this will be 
or not, is in the hands of God. What- 
ever He wills me to do, I must do it. 
My own will has become null, and all 
that is left for me to do is to wait on His 



128 FATHER HECKER 

good pleasure and His own time. To 
act or not to act, to suffer or not to suf- 
fer, to speak or to keep silence, to return 
to my former labours or never to return, 
to live on or die, all have become indif- 
ferent to me. I am in God's hands, 
with no will of my own ; for He has 
taken it, and it is for Him to do with 
me whatever He pleases. If this be a 
source of pain to others, none but God 
knows what it has cost me." 

One cannot but conjecture that his 
melancholy came, at least on its human 
side, from the weakness and helplessness 
of the once strong body, from the idle- 
ness of the eager mind, and from his 
impotence in the presence of great pur- 
poses. "To be separated from all; to 
look upon one's past as a dream ; to 
become a stranger to one's self, wander- 
ing from city to city, from country to 
country, ever in a strange land and 
among strangers ; to be attached to 
nothing ; to see no definite future ; to 



FATHEE HECKEE 129 

be an enigma to one's self; to find no 
light in any one to guide me ; isolated 
from all except God, — who will explain 
what all this means? . . . God alone has 
been always the whole desire of my 
heart, and what else can I wish than that 
His will may be wholly fulfilled in me ? 
Having rooted everything else out of my 
heart, and cut me off from all things, 
what other desire can I have than that 
He who has begun the work should 
finish it according to His design ? It is 
not important that I should know what 
that design is : it is enough that I am in 
His hands, to do with me whatever He 
pleases. To be and to live in His pres- 
ence is all. . . . God has given me to 
see the terrors of the Day of Judgment, 
and it has tried me with dreadful sever- 
ity ; but it is a wonderfully great privi- 
lege. . . . All this suffering, though it 
has been excruciating, has greatly puri- 
fied me, and was of the last necessity to 
me. Oh, how proud I was ! How vain 



130 FATHEE HECKEE 

I was ! And these long years of aban- 
donment by God have healed me." 

Between the times when he was over- 
come by brooding, as it were, not upon 
divine love, but upon the awfulness of 
God and upon the mystery of His justice 
and His punishment, there were periods 
of sereneness ; and in them his brave, 
eager spirit kept grappling the problem 
how the Church, God's visible agent on 
earth, should bring all the civilised 
world into her communion and gather 
together all men under the guidance of 
the Holy Spirit. "The Holy Spirit is 
preparing the Church for an increased 
infusion of Himself in the hearts of 
the faithful. This increased action of 
the Holy Spirit will renew the whole 
face of the earth, in religion and in 
society. Souls will be inspired by Him 
to assist in bringing about this end. 
The question is, how shall such souls co- 
operate with Him in preparation for 
this extraordinary outpouring of divine 



FATHEE HECKEE 131 

grace? The law of all extensive and 
effectual work is that of association. 
The inspiration and desire and strength 
to co-operate and associate in facilitating 
this preparation for the Holy Spirit 
must come to each soul from the Holy 
Spirit Himself. 

"What will be the nature of this 
association, and the special character of 
its work? The end to be had in view 
will be to set on foot a means of co-oper- 
ation with the Church in the conquest of 
the whole world to Christ, the renewal 
of the Apostolic spirit and life. For 
unity, activity, and choice of means, 
reliance should be had upon the bond 
of charity in the Holy Spirit and upon 
His inspirations. 

"The central truth to actuate the 
members should be the Kingdom of 
Heaven within the soul, which should 
be made the burden of all sermons, 
explaining how it is to be gained now. 
Men will be called for who have that 



132 FATHEE HECKEE 

universal synthesis of truth which will 
solve the problems, eliminate the antag- 
onisms, and meet the great needs of the 
age ; men who will defend and uphold 
the Church against the attacks which 
threaten her destruction, with weapons 
suitable to the times ; men who will turn 
all the genuine aspirations of the age ; — 
in science, in socialism, in politics, in 
spiritism, in religion, — which are now 
perverted against the Church, into means 
of her defence and universal triumph. " 
In the winter of 1875 he published a 
pamphlet entitled An Exposition of the 
Church in View of Recent Difficulties and 
Controversies and the Present Needs of the 
Age, in which he admitted a weakness 
and lack of energy of character among 
Catholic nations, in contrast with the 
greater virility of Protestant peoples. 
His theory was that, after the Eeforma- 
tion, the Church, in struggling against 
Protestantism with its exaggeration of 
personal independence, of necessity laid 



FATHEE HECKEE 133 

great stress upon the duty of implicit 
obedience, in order to maintain her- 
self and her divine authority, and that 
in consequence the Catholic peoples 
acquired habits of submission, depend- 
ence, and also an exaggerated esteem of 
the passive virtues. That submissive- 
ness had played a worthy part, and had 
maintained the Church in her author- 
ity ; but now, at the end of three cen- 
turies, changed times demanded changed 
virtues, action must be put first, self- 
reliance cultivated, and, as these quali- 
ties were more marked in the Anglo- 
Saxon and Teutonic peoples than among 
the Latins, the former must be brought 
to put their strength and vigour to the 
service of the Church, taking their turn 
in upholding and strengthening God's 
authority on earth. The Southern races, 
with their capacity for understanding 
the value of organisation, discipline, 
and the aesthetic aspects of religion, must 
permit the Northern races to satisfy 



134 PATHEE HECKEE 

their reason and their inclination to an 
inner life within the Church, even if the 
consequence should be a slighter ob- 
servance of external forms. All labour 
and effort must strive to the end that 
the power of the Holy Spirit be re- 
newed in each individual soul. This 
essay, together with others, was published 
in 1887 under the title The Church and 
the Age, and attracted much attention. 

In 1875, at the earnest request of his 
Paulist brethren, who needed his advice 
and guidance, he came back to this 
country, and lived on in feebleness of 
body, passing his winters in New York, 
either at the Community or with his 
brother, and a part of his summers at 
Lake George. In spite of illness he kept 
up his interest in the cause of the 
Church, and insisted upon the need of 
action. He said to a bishop who was on 
his way to Eome, "Tell the Holy 
Father that there are three things which 
will greatly advance religion : First, to 



PATHEE HEOKEE 135 

place the whole Church in a missionary 
attitude, — make the Propaganda the 
right arm of the Church. Second, 
choose the cardinals from the Catholics 
of all nations, so that they shall be a 
Senate representing all Christendom. 
Third, make fall use of modern appli- 
ances and methods for transacting the 
business of the Holy See." And to a 
young priest just returned from Eome, 
who desired to go back, saying that "I 
find no time here to pray," he answered : 
u Don't be such a baby. Look around 
and see how much work there is to be 
done here. Is it not better to make some 
return to God — here in your own coun- 
try — for what He has done for you 
rather than to be sucking your thumbs 
abroad ? What kind of piety do you call 
that?" 

On February 14, 1888, his brother 
George died. u George and I," he 
once said, "were united in a way no 
words can describe. Our union was 



136 FATHEE HECKEE 

something extremely spiritual and di- 
vine. " Father Elliott says, " Those 
who attended Father Hecker conld not 
but be convinced from what they saw 
and heard that God allowed George to 
visit his brother more than once after 
his death. v His brother John had died 
before, and he himself was not doomed 
to carry about his suffering body for 
long. On December 22 he died. 

Father Hecker was a man of profound 
convictions and strong character, res- 
tive under contradiction and quickly 
provoked by opposition, but of un- 
bounded patience. In him was united, 
in a most rare degree, a mystic sensibil- 
ity such as is told of in lives of saints, 
with an energy of action to a definite 
end, such as marks active leaders of 
men. In contemplation, he was lost in 
supersensuous mysticism. In deed, he 
was bold, practical, and greatly am- 
bitious. His detachment from the earth 
and the bonds of the body was absolute. 



FATHER HECKER 137 

The mystics — Jacob Boehme, Saint John 
of the Cross, Saint Theresa — were his 
spiritual kin. Yet the tie which bound 
him to his mother and his brothers was 
most tenderly loving. In science — the 
study of a material world — he took no 
interest, in art and literature but little ; 
Coventry Patmore was his favourite 
poet. In such matters he found no oc- 
cupation for his soul. In a generation 
less sympathetic, perhaps, than any 
other with the mysteries of the Spirit, 
in a country not understanding his 
Church, he accomplished much. Had 
he lived at another time, here or else- 
where, he might have achieved more ; 
but he could not have given a nobler 
example of loyalty to the highest that he 
knew. His presence and manner were 
charming. Well may Archbishop Ire- 
land say, u We shall always distinguish 
Isaac Thomas Hecker as the ornament, 
the flower, of our American priesthood." 



XL 

No account of Father Hecker which 
ends with his death is complete. His 
ideas affected a number of prelates in 
the Catholic Church in this country, 
and also represented clearly and defi- 
nitely a certain trend of thought among 
American Catholics, so that, as events 
shaped themselves, those ideas of his 
became the subject of much difference 
of opinion both here and in Europe. 
To an outsider this difference of opinion 
seems a part of the inevitable opposition 
between those minds which naturally 
hold fast to the past, clinging to old 
habits and associations, loving and rev- 
erencing those things which are hal- 
lowed by the loves and sufferings of men 
long dead, and those other minds which 
naturally turn to change, feeling that 
everything changes, that life means 
growth, and that many old things must 
and should in the course of nature slough 



FATHEE HECKBE 139 

off. About this fundamental diversity 
of character and of opinion clustered 
various other differences, that of race, 
that of nationality, that of education. 
Hence there naturally arose two parties 
in the Catholic Church, both in this 
country and in Europe, one pulling for- 
ward, the other holding back, which 
were radically opposed to one another. 
The biography of Father Hecker was 
the chance spark that set these opposing 
views ablaze. 

It happened not long after Father 
Hecker' s death that several distin- 
guished prelates — Cardinal Gibbons, 
Archbishop Ireland, Archbishop Keane, 
at one time rector of the Catholic 
University at Washington, Monsignor 
O'Connell, at one time rector of the 
American College at Eome, Monsignor 
? Gorman, bishop of Sioux Falls, South 
Dakota, Archbishop Kain of St. Louis — 
began to represent in the public mind, 
rightly or wrongly, a certain set of ideas 



140 FATHER HECKER 

and a certain line of conduct, which 
were more closely connected with, a 
sympathy with. American institutions 
and with. American independence than 
the public, at least the Protestant pub- 
lic, had expected to find among the 
high, officers of the Catholic Church. 
For example, Cardinal Gibbons pro- 
nounced the opening prayer at the Con- 
gress of Eeligions held at the World's 
Fair in 1893 ; and Monsignor Keane 
read papers there in the presence and 
company of men representing practi- 
cally all the Protestant sects and all the 
various religions of the world. In 1894 
Monsignor Keane delivered an address 
before the International Scientific Con- 
gress of Catholics in Brussels, in which 
he expressed very freely certain ideas 
very similar to those which Father 
Hecker had held. In 1891 Father 
Walter Elliott's Life of Father Hecker 
had been published in New York, with 
an exceedingly interesting and striking 



FATHER HECKEE 141 

introduction by Archbishop Ireland. 
As Father Elliott was one of the Paulist 
Fathers, this book seemed but a natural 
and pious duty ; and the ideas expressed 
in it were so nicely in harmony with the 
ideas prevalent in this country that 
it provoked no discussion here. Very 
largely on account of the reputation of 
Archbishop Ireland the book attracted 
attention in France ; and in the summer 
of 1897 a translation into French was 
made, which was preceded by cer- 
tain eulogistic newspaper articles. The 
translation was not exact, it was com- 
pressed, and therefore might give a 
somewhat different general impression 
from that given by the English version. 
M. PAbbe Klein, a professor in the 
Catholic Institute in Paris, wrote a pref- 
ace, in which he expressed his fervent 
admiration for Father Hecker. The 
translation itself was anonymous. In 
this same summer Monsignor ? Connell 
made an address before the Catholic 



142 FATHER HECKEE 

Scientific Congress at Fribourg, in which 
lie praised those ideas which were be- 
ginning to be known as American ideas. 
By these and other means the conserva- 
tive party among the French Catholics 
was made aware of the sharp differences 
of opinion between it and this liberal 
branch of the Church in America, and of 
the use which the progressive or radical 
party in the French Church made of 
those American opinions to gain support 
for itself. Thereupon M. PAbb6 Maig- 
nen, a priest of the Congregation of Saint 
Yincent de Paul, wrote a book entitled 
Le Pere Seeker est-il un Saint t and sub- 
sequently an English version of it, with 
certain slight changes, entitled Father 
Seeker } is he a Saint ? Cardinal Eichard, 
archbishop of Paris, to whom jurisdic- 
tion in the matter properly belonged, 
declined to give his imprimatur. M. 
P Abb6 Maignen had recourse to Father 
Lepidi, a Dominican monk, master of 
the Sacred Palace in Eome, who gave 



PATHEE HEOKEE 143 

the Vatican imprimatur. This unusual 
proceeding betrayed strong sympathy 
with the publication. The book repre- 
sents the views of the conservative, or 
retrograde, party in the Church, and 
sets forth very plainly the great differ- 
ences between its opinions and the so- 
called American opinions. It contains 
a running commentary upon Father 
Elliott's Life of Seeker ', and perhaps 
makes unduly prominent and perhaps 
distorts those ideas with which Maignen 
particularly finds fault and then replies 
to those ideas with argument and invec- 
tive. Maignen felt very strongly and 
spoke very plainly. These two books, 
the French translation of Hecker's Life 
and Le Pere SecTcer est-il un Saint? set 
forth the two sides, and raised a very 
sharp issue between the two sets of 
ideas. The controversy spread to 
Eome. Strong, almost bitter feelings 
were aroused against the Americans, 
and were strongly uttered. 



144 FATHEE HECKEE 

His Holiness, Leo XIH., has twice ex- 
pressed himself upon the line of conduct 
and the set of ideas which the party of 
progress in America had adopted or had 
been supposed by the public to have 
adopted. The first time was in a letter 
to Monsignor (now Cardinal) Satolli, the 
Apostolic Delegate to the United States 
upon the subject of congresses, commonly 
called l ' Parliaments of Eeligions. ' ? His 
Holiness forbade Catholics to take part 
in such mixed congresses ; but in his let- 
ter he says: " While thus fulfilling a 
duty of Our apostolic charge in making 
this communication, We are pleased at 
the same time, Venerable Brother, to 
recommend to you the method followed 
by the Paulists. It is their wise prac- 
tice to give public conferences for Our 
dissident brethren, explaining Catholic 
teaching and refuting the objections that 
are urged against it." 

The second time, the Pope delivered 
his judgment directly upon the contro- 



FATHEE HECKEE 145 

versy, as it appeared to be, between the 
ideas attributed to the advanced party in 
the Church and the conservative ideas of 
their adversaries. This letter, entitled 
"Concerning New Opinions, etc.," is 
dated January 22, 1899 ; but it was not 
published until February. It is directed 
to Cardinal Gibbons, and reads in part as 
follows : "It is known to you, beloved 
son, that the biography of Isaac Thomas 
Hecker, especially through the action of 
those who undertook to translate or in- 
terpret it in a foreign language, has ex- 
cited not a little controversy on account 
of certain opinions brought forward con- 
cerning the way of leading Christian 
life. . . . The underlying principle of 
these new opinions is that, in order more 
easily to attract those who differ from 
her, the Church should shape her teach- 
ings more in accord with the spirit of 
the age and relax some of her ancient 
severity and make some concessions to 
new opinions. Many think that these 



146 FATHEE HECKER 

concessions should be made, not only in 
regard to ways of living, but even in re- 
gard to doctrines which belong to the 
deposit of the faith. They contend that 
it would be opportune, in order to gain 
those who differ from Us, to omit certain 
points of her teaching which are of lesser 
importance, and to tone down the mean- 
ing which the Church has always at- 
tached to them. It does not need many 
words, beloved son, to prove the falsity 
of these ideas if the nature and origin of 
the doctrine which the Church puts for- 
ward are called to mind. The Vatican 
Council says concerning this point : 'For 
the doctrine of faith which God has re- 
vealed has not been proposed, like a 
philosophical invention to be perfected 
by human ingenuity, but has been de- 
livered as a divine deposit to the Spouse 
of Christ, to be faithfully kept and infal- 
libly declared. Hence that meaning of 
the sacred dogmas is perpetually to be 
retained which Our Holy Mother, the 



FATHEE HECKEE 147 

Church, has once declared ; nor is that 
meaning ever to be departed from under 
the pretence or pretext of a deeper com- 
prehension of them.' — Constitutio de Fide 
Catholica, Chapter IV. 

"We cannot consider as altogether 
blameless the silence which purposely 
leads to the omission or neglect of 
some of the principles of Christian 
doctrine. . . . 

"But, beloved son, in this present mat- 
ter of which We are speaking there is 
even a greater danger and a more mani- 
fest opposition to Catholic doctrine and 
discipline in that opinion of the lovers 
of novelty, according to which they hold 
such liberty should be allowed in the 
Church, that her supervision and watch- 
fulness being in some sense lessened, 
allowance be granted the faithful, each 
one to follow out more freely the leading 
of his own mind and the trend of his own 
proper activity. They are of opinion 
that such liberty has its counterpart in 



148 FATHEE HECKBE 

the newly given civil freedom which is 
now the right and the foundation of al- 
most every secular state. 

"In the apostolic letters concerning 
the constitution of states . . . We ... set 
forth the difference existing between 
the Church, which is a divine society, 
and all other social human organizations 
which depend simply on free will and 
choice of men. 

"It is alleged that now the Vatican 
decree concerning the infallible teaching 
authority of the Eoman Pontiff having 
been proclaimed, that nothing further on 
that score can give any solicitude, and 
accordingly, since that has been safe- 
guarded and put beyond question, a 
wider and freer field both for thought 
and action lies open to each one. But 
such reasoning is evidently faulty. . . . 

"Coming now to speak of the conclu- 
sions which have been deduced from the 
above opinions, and for them, We readily 
believe there was no thought of wrong 



FATHEE HECKER 149 

or guile, yet the things themselves cer- 
tainly merit some degree of suspicion. 
First, all external guidance is set aside 
for those souk who are striving after 
Christian perfection as being superfluous 
or, indeed, not useful in any sense — the 
contention being that the Holy Spirit 
pours richer and more abundant graces 
than formerly upon the souls of the faith- 
ful, so that without human intervention 
He teaches and guides them by some 
hidden instinct of His own. . . . 

"To practise virtue, there is absolute 
need of the assistance of the Holy Spirit ; 
yet We find those who are fond of 
novelty giving an unwarranted impor- 
tance to the natural virtues, as though 
they better responded to the customs and 
necessities of the times. . . . This over- 
esteem of natural virtue finds a method 
of expression in assuming to divide all 
virtues in active and passive, and it 
is alleged that, whereas passive virtues 
found better place in past times, our 



150 FATHEK HECKEE 

age is to be characterised by the active. 
That such a division and distinction can- 
not be maintained is patent. . . . 

"From this disregard of the evangeli- 
cal virtues, erroneously styled passive, 
the step was a short one to a contempt 
of the religious life which has in some 
degree taken hold of minds. That such 
a value is generally held by the up- 
holders of new views We infer from 
certain statements concerning the vows 
which religious orders take. They say 
vows are alien to the spirit of our times, 
in that they limit the bounds of human 
liberty, that they are more suitable to 
weak than to strong minds ; that, so far 
from making for human perfection and 
the good of human organisation, they 
are hurtful to both ; but that this is as 
false as possible ... is clear. . . . 

" Finally, ... it is stated that the way 
and method hitherto in use among Cath- 
olics for bringing back those who have 
fallen away from the Church should be 



FATHEE HECKEE 151 

left and another one chosen, in which 
matter it will suffice to note that it is 
not the part of prudence to neglect that 
which antiquity with long experience 
has approved and which is also taught 
by Apostolic authority. . . . 

"From the foregoing it is manifest, 
beloved son, that We are not able to give 
approval to those views which, in their 
collective sense, are called by some 
'Americanism.' " 

Archbishop Ireland, Monsignor Keane, 
and Monsignor O'Connell have all de- 
nied that they had held the doctrines 
thus designated as " Americanism. 7 ' 
And it is plain that His Holiness has 
not condemned Father Hecker nor all 
of his opinions, but rather an extreme 
and distorted representation of those 
opinions as they appear in the fearful 
minds of the conservatives. Good Cath- 
olics may still find in Father Hecker' s 
mysticism a likeness to Saint Theresa, 
and in his vigorous life a likeness to 



152 FATHEE HECKEE 

Saint Bernard. It has often been that 
opinions feared by the timid to-day be- 
come their stay and strength on the 
morrow ; so it may be that the Church 
of the twentieth century will gladly 
take Father Hecker's opinions as the 
rough materials out of which to fashion 
sound doctrines that shall help men to 
lead better lives. 



BIBLIOGEAPHY. 

The Life of Father Keeker } by Father 
Walter Elliott, is the only biography 
of the subject of this sketch. Father 
Elliott was one of Father Hecker's dis- 
ciples. It was most fitting that it should 
have fallen to him to write the life of 
his friend and master. That biography 
is fair, complete, and fall of quotations 
from Father Hecker's private journal 
and from his letters to his brothers and 
friends. 

The other books, essays, and articles 
which are enumerated below add no in- 
formation about Father Hecker. They 
concern themselves chiefly with the 
controversy which arose over that bi- 
ography. 

I. The Life of Father Hecker. By 
Eev. Walter Elliott, with an Introduc- 
tion by the Most Eev. John Ireland, 
D.D., Archbishop of St. Paul. (New 
York, 1891, 1894 : The Columbus Press.) 



154 BIBLIOGEAPHY. 

II. The Dublin Beview, vol. iii., July, 
1892. " Isaac Hecker." By Dr. Will- 
iam Barry. This article is merely a 
review of Father Elliott's book. 

III. The Catholic World, vol. lx., Janu- 
ary, 1895. "The Consecrated Mission 
of the Printed Word. ' ? By Margaret E. 
Jordan. This article deals with the 
Apostolate of the Press as begun by 
Father Hecker. It contains no infor- 
mation concerning Father Hecker ex- 
cept what is in the Life. 

IV. The Catholic World, vol. lxvii., June, 
1898. "Personal Becollections of Fa- 
ther Hecker. " By PAbbe Dufresne. 
The substance of this article appeared 
in the appendix at the end of the Life. 
L'Abbe Dufresne had known Father 
Hecker in Switzerland. 

V. Etudes sue, jJ Amebic anisme — Le 
PfcRE Hecker, est-il un Saint? By 
Charles Maignen, S.T.D., priest of the 
Congregation of the Brothers of St. Yin- 



BIBLIOGEAPHY. 155 

cent de Paul. (Eome : International 
Catholic Library — Desclee, Lefebvre & 
Co. Paris : Librairie de Victor Betaux. 
1898. ) This is an examination of Father 
Elliott's Life and a criticism of certain 
ideas found, or claimed to be found, 
therein. 

VI. Father Hecker, is he a Saint? 
By the same. This is an English ver- 
sion, with very slight differences, of the 
foregoing book. It has the same pub- 
lishers in Eome and Paris. In London, 
Burns & Oates. 1898. 

VII. The Open Court, vol. xii., Novem- 
ber, 1898. u Latin and American in 
the Eoman Catholic Church." By J. 
Murphy. A slight article. 

VIII. Orestes A. Brownson' s Early 
Life : from 1803-1844. By Henry F. 
Brownson. Detroit, Michigan, 1898 : 
H. F. Brownson, Publisher. This vol- 
ume contains a number of letters from 
Hecker to Brownson, written in 1843 
and 1844. 



156 BIBLIOGEAPHY 

IX. Orestes A. Brownson's Middle 
Life : from 1845-1855. By Henry P. 
Brownson. Detroit, Michigan, 1899 : 
H. F. Brownson, Publisher. This vol- 
ume is a successor to the last. It con- 
tains a few letters from Hecker. 

X. The National Beview, vol. xxxiii., 
March, 1899. " An American Eeligious 
Crusade. " By Dr. William Barry. 
This article touches the controversy con- 
cerning "Americanism." Dr. Barry 
sympathises with the liberal party. 

XI. The Outlook, vol. Ixi., March 11, 
1899. u Americanism versus Eoman 
Catholicism." By Victor Charbonnel. 
The writer, a Frenchman, had been a 
priest, and had espoused the liberal 
cause with great zeal. Finding himself 
out of accord with his superiors, he left 
the priesthood. 

XII. The Nation, vol. lxviii., March 30, 
1899. u 'Americanism/ or the Catho- 
lic Church in America." By Bichard 



BIBLIOGEAPHY 157 

Norton. The writer, living in Borne, 
gives a sketch of the controversy from a 
point of view unfavourable to the con- 
servative party. 

XIII. The Reformed Church Review, 
fourth series, vol. iii., June, 1899. 
"The Pope's Letter on Americanism." 
Editorial. This is a slight editorial 
from a liberal. 

XIV. The North American Review, vol. 
170, No. 3, March, 1900. "The End 
of 'Americanism' in France.' 7 By 
P. L. Pechenard. The writer is the 
Eector of the Catholic University of 
Paris, and writes in sympathy with the 
conservative party. 

XV. The North American Review, vol. 
170, No. 5, May, 1900. "The Genesis 
of l Americanism. ? } ' By J. St. Clair 
Etheridge. The writer is in sympathy 
with the American party, and contends 
that the ideas condemned by the Pope 
were not advocated by that party. 



The BEACON BIOGRAPHIES. 

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The following volumes are issued : — 

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